Remember the hope you had as a child? Even if you were more of a sad-sack Charlie Brown, you still had that Calvin-like fire of imagination. Tapping into that and bringing it to the adult you is behind Cloud Cult’s uplifting Academy Creek.
Reminiscent a bit of Arcade Fire’s seminal Funeral in the ‘running away and being that kid forever’ with opener “Got Your Backpack Open That Backdoor”, Academy builds into crescendos of positive emotion after the darkness. It’s best exemplified by the powerful call to the powerful kid inside “I Am a Force Field”, the uplift of songs such as “Something In Me Is Changing” coming to the hopeful celebratory end in closer “Different Kind of Day”.
We are all wistful for our youth, whether it was in your twenties or single digits. But what’s important is to not just look back in sadness in what was lost, but revive the essential spirit of all ages.
