Pitchfork Forkcast: New Music: Cloud Cult: "When Water Comes to Life" [MP3/Stream]

New Music: Cloud Cult: "When Water Comes to Life" [MP3/Stream]

Minnesota's Cloud Cult tend to go for grandiose concepts for their albums, but their songs are as humane as their recording processes are eco-friendly, with the fine line between natural and preternatural an important theme. Previous albums have centered around the Northern Lights (2004's underrated Aurora Borealis), whether there's more to us than flesh (2005's Advice From the Happy Hippopotamus), and medicine (2007's The Meaning of 8). "When Water Comes to Life", the first mp3 from the forthcoming Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes), concerns itself with the liquid to which all people owe their lives. Cloud Cult records are notoriously eclectic affairs, ranging from cathartic art-rock to Books-like pastiche, electronic freak-outs, and bare-bones acoustic ballads. "When Water Comes to Life" is the chamber-pop side of the group, rising out of a twinkling orchestral introduction to a stomping, overdub-laden chant, with distorted guitars bobbing to the surface. It's as much ritual as art, bandleader Craig Minowa's voice repeating, "All you need to know/ Is you are born of water." And not a drop to drink.