Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory

With Steve Albini at the helm, Nirvana went from lo-fi Pixies disciples (Bleach) to L.A. studio musicians (Nevermind, In Utero). Cobain was notoriously unhappy with the makeover - one suspects that he wouldn’t have been humored by Rolling Stone’s recent Buddy Holly comparison - but Albini knows how to force dynamite pop records out of even his prickliest collaborators. Attack on Memory, the latest dauntless album from nouveau-grunge band Cloud Nothings, is as rich and alive with feeling as any Albini production since PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me. Head honcho Dylan Baldi screams and dives over the suffocating quiet of “No Future/No Past,” giving way to the sputtering, sped-up pianos of “Separation.” Baldi is a champion of 20-year-old angst; “Our Plans” smells so completely of teen spirit, it’s almost as if you’re hearing Cobain reincarnated in the flesh. He gives us his mission statement over the brutal guitar crunch of “Wasted Days”: “I know my life’s not gonna change/And I’ll live.” (5 out of 5 stars)