Album #193: Crack Cloud – Pain Olympics

• Released: 2020
• Origin: Vancouver, Canada
• Label: Meat Machine
• Best Track: Tunnel Vision

I’ll confess I had forgotten what Crack Cloud sounded like. I saved a couple of EPs by them a while ago and remembered I liked them, but when their debut full-length album dropped last Friday, it was a bit of a rediscovery.

As it turns out, even using what I had previously heard as a barometer, Pain Olympics is a pretty arty and experimental work from what is now a post-punk seven-piece. It reminds me in a way of the recent debut from Pottery in how it blends the traditional bass lines and claustrophic vocals of post-punk with, well, whatever.

Favourite tracks include the B52s-like ‘Ouster Stew’ and the rampaging ‘Tunnel Vision’, on what is truly a post-punk record for the isolation and weirdness of 2020.