photo courtesy of jake kelsoe "sometimes in the nighttime I remember you / sometimes in the right light I can picture you..."
The darkly dreamy and biting spotlight of "Sometimes" by Omo Cloud, the musical moniker of non-binary San Diego singer-songwriter Cole De La Isla, is sometimes a flashlight showing the way and sometimes blinding high beam. De La Isla knows how to build a musical, artful narrative and does so expertly here. From the get go, their vocal melodies and cagey chord progressions call you in to lean close. I love the steady burn and build up, the art rock pitch and that one chord saturated in a dissonant place (is everything).
This is the thing, De La Isla's voice, especially caught in the orchestral spiralling sound, is so multi-dimensional. You can feel their vulnerability, their snark, their bite (is it bark or bloody), and the tears too. The way De La Isla tightens their fists and then give way to a deeply moving bridge / outro (and I mean utterly beautiful) is incredibly impressive.
In a previous review of another song I wrote this:
[De La Isla's wonderfully engaging vocal countenance that while utterly unique had me flashing on a kind of amalgam of Blue Roses' Laura Groves, Tori Amos, Feist (off the top of my head) because their lilt may live in baroque pop places. At the same time De La Isla is a fully fledged rock singer too. The musical sense, super punchy and dreamily abstractions feel intense and for totally different reasons I flashed on Radiohead (circa The Bends) plus ELO (circa A New World Record). I consider Radiohead one of the best rock bands ever so this connective tissue thrills me and maybe the ELO kind of connection has to do with the surreal lushness that exists in the background and sometimes swelling forefront of "Ultimate Love". The attention to details, to universe building is apparent and to me, the sound here feels more analog than digital.]
I think that bears repeating especially on the sort of Radiohead and ELO connective tissue or seeds that I am feeling. In any event, I absolutely am digging, am adoring "Sometimes".
"Sometimes" is track 9 from Omo Cloud's debut album "Mausoleum" out via Dusty Mars Records. I hope you check it out on their Bandcamp since I am urging people to boycott Spotify.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.instagram.com/omo.cloud/
https://omocloud.bandcamp.com/track/ultimate-love-2
A mausoleum can be a lonesome place — cool and lonely and sad. But in the parlance of Omo Cloud — a.k.a. Cole De La Isla — it’s also a monument to what has come before. A way of letting go — and the title of their debut album, out via Dusty Mars Records on June 27th.
“This music was born out of the pandemic — and so much therapy,” De La Isla says. “The record is called Mausoleum because I'm trying to encapsulate this very long part of my life that is now closed, that I'm moving beyond — but I can always return to it and reflect on it.”
The non-binary singer-songwriter grew up in San Diego the child of two musicians, fed on a steady diet of Radiohead, Wilco, and David Bowie as they hung out in vocal booths and studios with the pair. Although they got their first guitar at 14, De La Isla was initially an actor; they left high school at 16 to move to L.A. and pursue that dream. But there was a pall over the profession for the teen, who says they were sexually abused by a leader of a Christian youth theater company as a child. “While I was never a true believer, this experience shattered my relationship to ‘faith’ of any kind,” they say. And this experience — along with the lack of control they felt in the acting world — led them to take control of their own creativity, feeding it, instead, into achingly gorgeous music that ruminates on everything from gender identity to religion to romantic love.
The result is Mausoleum, 11 celestially beautiful tracks that careen between sweet and sorrowful, produced, in part, with De La Isla’s long-time collaborator Andy Walsh. And, yes, although the songs are informed by De La Isla’s childhood trauma, they’re about more than that. They’re a reclamation — and a balm to anyone who has felt similarly lost. “It's taken a really long time to get to a place where I feel like I have a voice again,” De La Isla says. “I also don't want it to overly inform a listener. The music belongs to them.”
Take single Ultimate Love, a gloriously grunge-tinged take on what the titular emotion is — whether in the religious sense or the romantic. “There’s a kind of despair that you can feel when you are brought up in a religious space — belief and disbelief. Trust and distrust,” De La Isla says. “I was doing a lot of work redefining what love is and what love can be. And ultimate love, that's silly. Community is important — platonic love. It’s not all or nothing.”
“I feel like I spent a lot of my teenhood being very angsty and existential and cynical in a lot of ways, but I don't want that to be the takeaway of the record at all,” De La Isla adds. “I feel the takeaway is actually a very optimistic one. We're all capable of growth and change, and it is a lot of work, but it is worth it. I want people to trust their gut. I want to help people connect with hard emotions — and I want people to be inspired.”
And, so, we’re not buried with our past — but we can visit it from time to time and see how far we’ve come.
Omo Cloud, San Diego, non binary singer songwriter, aka Cole De La Isla, indie rock, alt rock, art rock, baroque pop, lush art rock sound, superior songwriting, "Sometimes", debut album "Mausoleum",
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