Majical Cloudz produces haunting music that goes beyond
A few weeks ago Majical Cloudz played a set in New York City’s famous venue MoMA PS1. Two DJs prefaced the duo’s performance with another two playing after. “It was fun” says Devon Welsh singer of the group frequent Grimes collaborator and graduate in religious studies from McGill. “It was just an unusual context for our music so for that reason it was a struggle.”
Initially audience members chatted texted laughed danced — fairly regular behaviour at shows these days. But Majical Cloudz shows tend to be rather different.
The Montreal-based group present a type of music that can only but unfairly be compared to the likes of Sigur Rós: it’s stuff that often causes audience members to cry or sit or at least be silent. Welsh’s voice is a mix between Matt Berninger and Antony Hegarty and when partnered with Matthew Otto’s minimalist synth-heavy production it creates an almost tragic form of music meditating often on death of the body and relationships. It’s hauntingly personal yet completely relatable. Kant might’ve called it music of the sublime.
Welsh assures that the remainder of the PS1 set wasn’t that bad; it just took people a bit of time to figure out what exactly Majical Cloudz is (their bizarrely cheery name might have something to do with it). The duo seems to offer more than simply an audience-musician relationship with an unmistakable line drawn between entities. The intensely haunting music of Majical Cloudz demands more — a more intimate collaborative exchange. Watching Welsh sing is an experience closer to watching a performance artist than a conventional musician. And from what he’s seen the younger people are the more they understand the project.
“I’ve just felt like younger people have more of an openness to getting really into the headspaces of the music” Welsh says. “In the worst version of playing for 20-somethings it can become some kind of you’re just one of a million different sort of cool bands that come and they want to check out. It’s just like ‘oh I wanted to see them’ and check your phone the whole time and be indifferent. When people are teenagers they have a different relationship with music. It’s a lot more personal.”
It’s not a matter of essentialism for Welsh — obviously the point isn’t that only minors can enjoy Majical Cloudz. Perhaps there’s simply a naiveté amidst the young a phenomenon that’s present before attending shows becomes a recognized form of accumulating cultural capital. Whatever it is it’s something that Welsh deeply values — Majical Cloudz recently did a series of free all-ages shows in record stores throughout California to ensure everyone could come.
“It’s lame when you go to a city and you have people contacting you and saying ‘oh it’s a bummer that I can’t come’ and I think about why can’t they come? Well because they’re not old enough to drink and the venues make their money from selling alcohol” says Welsh. “And you start to feel like you’re working for the alcohol industry rather that being part of something that is all about music.”
Although the upcoming tour of the duo’s fabulous debut LP Impersonator won’t take place in all-ages venues — there just aren’t that many spots for small-scale acts to begin with — it’ll be Majical Cloudz’s first headlining tour and the longest tour period (they will have spent a majority of this year on the road when it’s all said and done). Such an opportunity will certainly be a new one and a litmus test of whether emotional engagement is largely limited to the under-18 crowd.
“On the one hand the shows will be a lot smaller than shows that we did on our last tour” Welsh says. “But by virtue of the fact we’re headlining the way that we’ll go into the shows in terms of our expectations will be different. Instead of going into it just wanting to expose people to your music and get them interested in it we now go into it with the assumption that people are interested in our music.”
The word’s spreading. Impersonator was long-listed for the Polaris Prize and many bloggers expressed a fair bit of disbelief that the album didn’t make it to the Top 10 (a fan brilliantly tweeted “Polaris snubs Mac DeMarco and Majical Cloudz for Metric and Tegan and Sara? Is this 2004?” after the announcement). But regardless of what awards the group wins there’s one thing that doesn’t need an adjudicator: with frightening vulnerability extreme intentionality and exceptional quality Majical Cloudz is perhaps one of the very best examples of the power of art to connect people in an age of increasing detachment.
