The Clouds

by Jon Soong

The Clouds are just about as cool as you can get. After 3 albums and many EP's and singles, they are touring Australia promoting their new EP Panel Van. I talked to Jodi Phyllis, Patricia Young, Raphael Whittingham, and temporary guitarist Ben Nightingale about lots of different things, as well as giving them a bag of junk from which they made an egg carton boat.

RAD: When will you back in the U.S.?
Pat: Don't know.
Jodi: Probably not 'till middle to late next year..
Pat: 'Cuz we're doing an album.
Jodi: We gotta record here. (Sydney)
RAD: When will that new album be out?
Jodi: July-ish
Pat: We're looking at mid next year.
RAD: Who'd did you tour with?
Clouds: We were mainly doing our own tour. We supported lots of other bands, though, like Luscious Jackson and Juliana Hatfield.
Pat: We met a lot of really young bands, like bands that are as unknown as we are over there and there's a great band called Jenny Any Kind, they're on Elektra. There's a band called Cockeyed Ghosts. They were really good.... They're not signed to anyone.
Jodi: Just a lot of bands that were similar to us in a ways, doin' something that we connected with. It was really fun meeting them and good hearing new stuff.
Pat: A lot of crappy bands too (laughs)
Raphael: Lotta shit.....One good band in every ten probably. Depends, it's up to your taste. I dunno, bands that almost sounded like cover bands.
RAD: What's being on Elektra like?
Jodi: They actually had a huge business shuffle, and they dropped twenty international bands. We were one of them.
Pat: They closed down their international department.
Jodi: So we're not on Elektra anymore.
Pat: But they gave us a Club Wagon, a 15-seat van to drive around in.
Raphael: They spent a lot of money on us, basically. But they totally changed their policy concerning international bands. They're mainly signing American bands now so...
Jodi: ...so yeah, if there's anyone out there with a new deal ready for us....
RAD: Why don't you put more live songs on your EP, seeing as it costs virtually nothing?
Jodi: We'd like to, but "Thunderhead" came out [in the US] 2 years after it was made and came out here (Australia). It's really frustrating putting out stuff that's so old overseas. But we can't worry about that anymore. We're just gonna get on with it. Like, we were kinda waiting 'till we got a deal around the world.
RAD: What are your favourite albums?
Clouds: The new Weezer album, Trompe le Monde, The Best of Rodreguez, Low, Pollyanna, Underground Lovers, The Verys, Peg, Crow, You Am I, Beasts of Bourbon.
RAD: And how would you describe each other?
Raphael: (laughs) Earth, Sun, Wind, Moon.

Well, that was the extremely friendly and down to earth Clouds, the afternoon before their Adelaide gig. The gig, by the way, was excellent, with the smallish crowd getting right in, and the now near-legendary Cloud Sway (the sway Patricia does) being clearly and coolly evident.

Check out the Clouds now!