We already knew that 89.3 the Current had a thing for Cloud Cult, but National Public Radio's national music department is also showing the Minnesota/Wisconsin orchestral rockers some true love this week. Cloud Cult's new album, "Love" -- due out next week -- is one of the newly featured albums on NPR's "First Listen" page, where you can stream albums before they're out. It's up there alongside new discs by Josh Ritter and Thurston Moore's new band, Chelsea Light Moving. NPR Music writer Stephen Thompson compares Craig Minowa & Co. to the Polyphonic Spree for perspective and fittingly suggests they are "quite possibly the least ironic — and least cynical — band in existence."
Proof of Cloud Cult's unjaded viewpoint can be heard and seen in the band's snowbound but immensely heartwarming new video for "Good Friend," which premiered last week at mtvU. Having to sit through those ads to view it only spoils that sweet sentimentality a little bit.
Twin Cities fans have to wait until April 27 to hear the new songs live. The first First Avenue release party sold out, so the club added a second show on April 28. Minowa and his wife Connie -- who welcomed another baby last year -- are picking and choosing their tour plans more carefully this year and won't start until an East Coast jaunt in early April. They called off plans to perform at Austin's South by Southwest Music Conference next month. It's looking like they didn't need the exposure in the first place.
