A&E

Bottom of the Hill, a slice of an edifice in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill District, has long been a venue for high-quality live performances. This past Saturday was no exception, with Cleveland post-punk indie band Cloud Nothings bringing their calculated guitar riffs and plaintive lyrics to the venue’s intimate stage. The casual camaraderie of the band during instrument set-up was misleading — Cloud Nothings weren’t here for the smiles. Bringing heartbeat-readjusting bass and a pervasive, brooding sense of foreboding, the performance was an assault. However, Stockholm Syndrome seemed to set upon the audience like an unshakable mist — attendees were in love with their assailants.

With little introduction, front-man and original founder of the band, Dylan Baldi, stepped onto the stage, his bright red Vans scuffling on the floor as he grabbed his guitar. With the first signalling chords of “Stay Useless” — possibly the catchiest track off their third album, 2012’s Attack On Memory — the crowd started moving frantically to the music.

The band showcased its instrumental prowess, demonstrating that, despite all of Baldi’s lyrical command, this is in fact a band and Attack On Memory was a collaborative song-writing process. This is certainly a radical change from Baldi’s early days, when he was creating lo-fi indie pop in his parents’ basement. Baldi first released 2010’s Turning On and 2011’s self-titled Cloud Nothings, the former a fuzzy affair with lo-fidelity as an occasional drawback and the latter catchy indie pop — both a far cry from Attack. At the Hill, the band wisely chose to isolate the instrumental section off the track “Separation,” which builds with urgent, imploring guitars and  a drum barrage, and transitioned with precision into “Cut You” where heartbreak roughens Baldi’s voice until he’s  growling “Do you wanna hurt him? / Do you wanna kill him?”

Most striking was the seamless transition from record to live performance. There was little difference between the tracks off Attack and Cloud Nothings’ interpretation on stage, besides the obvious visual aspect of the band executing the rhythms with cool adroitness. With older material, the live execution improved upon the record, as with “Leave You Forever” and “Forget You All The Time,” though both tracks were at odds with the streamlined instrumentality of songs from Attack. In fact, it’s clear that the troupe is making a conscious effort to re-brand their sound; with eight out of the 14 songs in the set coming from Attack, they played the album in its entirety.

Nevertheless, the occasional discrepancy  was hardly a problem, as the band would readjust quickly to reclaim their initial mood. “No Sentiment” touted Baldi’s voice —  a haunting, suppressed wail — over subversively frenetic undertones and lurking bass. It is Cloud Nothings at their most nothing, which in this case, means a lot — the song negates emotionality, memory, sentimentality and nostalgia, cymbals erasing traces of memory in a paradoxically cleansing and burdensome song.

Of course, that’s all part of the shtick, as not one part of the performance felt like a burden. The set finished with the screamer-ballad, “No Future/No Past,” a veritable ode to futility, until shouts of “One more song!” brought the band back to the stage for “Hey Cool Kid,” from Turning On. “We don’t do this usually, which means it’s very, very special,” Baldi assured his expectant fans. If their Bottom of the Hill performance is any indication, Cloud Nothings are nothing to scoff about — they’re something special.

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