Cloud Becomes Your Hand: Rocks Or Cakes

Jesse Jarnow on June 4, 2014

Cloud Becomes Your Hand’s proper full-length debut, Rocks Or Cakes, thrills, buzzes, dives, surprises, effortlessly manages the task of being complex and light-handed simultaneously, bursts into prog-fusion star-shapes (“Bees Going Postal”), bends into unexpected circus counterpoints and toy piano tangents (“Bay Shamps”), features a song about a sevenheaded underwater creature that is ridiculous in all the best ways without being silly (“Sand of Sea”), challenges without being obnoxious, plays without being wasteful, dances like aliens are watching, sounds like a run-on interior monologue careening around the head of a benevolent eccentric group mind, is filled with colorful and imaginative passages, makes operatic Harry Partch-like speak-singing Beatles-y and pleasing (“Nuclei Spinoffs”), and is one of the most unique albums you will or won’t hear this year.

Artist: Cloud Becomes Your Hand
Album: Rocks Or Cakes
Label: Northern-Spy