The Clouds On Celebrating 35 Years…

THE CLOUDS are a beloved pillar of Australia’s timeless alternative music scene. They Celebrate their thirty fifth Anniversary with Three Exclusive Headline Shows in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Few artists embodied the indie spirit that defined the halcyon era of 90’s Australian Indie Music like The Clouds, who hold a special place in discerning music lover’s hearts. Known for their soaring harmonies, edgy indie pop undertow and undeniable stage aura, The Clouds shows are always something unique and memorable.

The band rapidly became an influential force in the Australian music landscape. Blending dreamy pop, angular rock, and hazy shoegaze elements with warm melodies and poetic, insightful lyrics making them eternal Triple J favourites. The Clouds thirty fifth Anniversary Tour celebrations will see them performing their catalogue of classic songs including Hieronymus, Red Serenade, Say It, Soul Eater, Anthem, Cloud Factory and more in what is guaranteed to be a sublime experience. Jodi Phillis talks to Hi Fi Way about this tour.

Congratulations on another milestone. Does it take a bit to reflect on thirty five years as The Clouds?
Oh, it’s just a number, isn’t it? I don’t know. It’s weird, it’s surreal. But, you know, it’s great that we can come out and celebrate the fact that we’re still doing this after so long. It’s a weird number.

Still thirty five years young and going strong. There’s plenty of love for The Clouds around the country, that’s got to mean quite a lot as well?
Yeah, that really does. That’s just incredible, and we feel so lucky that that is the case, that we actually can go out and do this every year or two. It’s brilliant. We’ve had so much fun, especially the last two or three tours. So yeah, we really can’t wait to do this one.

Is it hard not to get swept up in the nostalgia of such a tour?
For us, it doesn’t really feel about nostalgia, honestly. But I know it does for a lot of people, because I know it was kind of a soundtrack to a lot of people’s young lives, so I get all that. But for me, it just feels like, to be able to play these songs again and to be able to pull them off, because some of them are pretty bloody complicated, it just kind of feels celebratory. We feel proud that this body of work exists, and that we actually did that, and we can still do it. It feels very present, rather than just about nostalgia, if you know what I mean. Does that make sense?

It must be hard when you’ve got so many good songs. It’s not like a classic album tour where you’re playing an album start to end, this time it’s everything. It must be hard to consolidate that down into ninety minutes and still reflect the journey to date?
I think the exciting thing with this tour is we don’t have to stick to one album or one body of work. We’re cherry-picking our favourite songs and audiences’ favourite songs, and we’re including some really obscure tracks that we hardly even played back in the day. So it’s gonna be pretty fun in that way, and it’ll be different to the other shows.

When you go back through the archives, is there anything you’ve rediscovered that left you thinking, “Oh wow, why didn’t we do anything with that?”
Yeah, yeah, for sure. There’s a couple we’re throwing in like that, but I’m not going to tell you what they are.

Will there be a reissue or a greatest hits compilation or something along those lines?
Not at this tour, not at the moment. Maybe in the future. We have done a bit of that—we had an album out called Favourites. I think that’s just available digitally. But no, we don’t have that kind of thing coming up.

Looking back over thirty five years, what are the moments from the journey that really stand out and that you’re most proud of?
Just the fact that we did it, you know, that it happened. We did a lot of traveling, met a lot of people, made a lot of songs. We managed to remain friends after all that really intense time. It was pretty tough that touring life. It wasn’t easy on me, that’s for sure.

Do you remember your first gig?
I remember it as being, I don’t know if this was officially the first gig, but I think it was. We supported The Go-Betweens on their last gig at Max’s in Petersham in Sydney. That was incredible. That was the first gig, I think, where it felt like, “Oh, okay, we’re in the game.” That was pretty exciting.

Is there be anything you would have done differently? Or are you a believer that things happen and pan out for a reason?
I think that you can only do what you can do. You think you’re doing what you’re capable of doing at the time. I don’t see how we can go, “Oh, wish we’d done this, wish we’d done that.” There were a couple of deals we could have maybe not signed, or signed different ones. There were quite a lot of offers with record company deals and stuff. We might have stuffed up a bit there. But you just don’t know. Destiny just plays out how it’s going to play out.

Do you think there’ll be any new music as The Clouds at some point, or is there just no inclination right now?
I think in the back of our collective minds, there’s always the possibility. We certainly have a few songs floating around. Trish and I wrote quite a few songs together that are just kind of sitting there. It would be nice, but I can’t say when or if, really. Just leave it with us, and we’ll see what happens.

Does it feel like work when you tour with the rest of The Clouds, or just like good friends catching up and celebrating good times?
If it goes on too long, yes, it starts to feel like work. But no, we like doing these little quick bursts. It suits us really well. We have a great time, and that’s it. We play music that we’re really proud of, and somehow we’re still pulling it off, so yeah, it’s really exciting.

Was it just a little too tricky this time with Adelaide and Perth?
Yeah! That different time zone! I’m a notoriously bad sleeper, and it really stuffs me up doing the time zone change. By the time you get to Perth and you’re on stage, it’s 1AM. I don’t want to go into the details, but it’s quite taxing and then everyone’s got work outside of it, so we decided not to do it this time. I know some people are disappointed, but we will get back there. Sometimes you can’t do it all. I mean, you need to go to Tassie, and haven’t been to Darwin in years. So hopefully that’ll happen at some point.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch The Clouds on the following dates, tickets from Metropolis Touring…