Can’t go over it. Can’t go under it. Gotta go through it. And somewhere out there in the Pitch black beyond all darkness lies Peace & Purpose. The horizon you never quite crest until the inevitable end. Breathe deep — this fearful moment is the most alive you’re ever gonna feel. For the last decade, Crack Cloud’s vision has grown ever more expansive, more cinematic. Last go around, they dropped from The Heavens and then performed with their bare backs to an endless darkening desert. Now they’ve crammed all that life into some metallic and strange object called Peace & Purpose. All the terror of living. All the helplessness. All the raw human will. All glued and screwed and locked into this impossible tactile shape of dungeon dub; sour milk vox; Avant-protest music. Music arm wrestling itself to the ground. Far afield of beauty. The discordant symphony of factory farming and grim timber of the meat processing plant. The grinding din of the cogs. And yet, never giving up in spite of all good sense. Even in death, we are a coterie of survivors. Look now: There’s Terry Fox on his one-legged Marathon of Hope across The Great White North while cancer spreads through his lungs. A self-annihilating drive to feel alive. Rage against the dying of the light, they say. Well, how ‘bout it then!??! Peace & Purpose is not in any way some art project meditation on Punk Rock. It is Punk Rock. Terrifying, inspiring, vital, invigorating and most importantly, utterly unexpected. Every goddamn stupid day is a sublime slice of fresh hell. That’s the point. Gotta go through it. Wishing you Peace & Purpose — if only in that last big breath.

TRACK LISTING

1 - Peace & Purpose
2 - Safe Room
3 - Not The Same Thing
4 - Life On A Farm
5 - Pick Apart
6 - Marathon Of Hope
7 - Stop Cutting Me Down
8 - Shut The Fuck Up
9 - Reunion
10 - Phantom Limb
11 - Thoughts On My Faith
12 - Eris On The Run
13 - Red House
14 - Truth In Trauma

Crack Cloud has always been something beyond a rock band: both profound and grand, vaporous and elusive.

The first iteration of Crack Cloud was formed nearly a decade ago as a proxy-rehab outlet on the fringes of Calgary. Over time, two EPs and accompanying visual pieces were produced out of the residence known as Red Mile. By 2017, several members had relocated to Vancouver, working out of harm reduction centers and low-barrier shelters. Sobriety, self-reformation and the idealism of their work further formed an ethos for Crack Cloud. It was during these years that the band produced their astounding 2020 album ‘Pain Olympics’. At once, their vision became expansive, cinematic.

Now, ‘Red Mile’ is a bit of a homecoming. Members have returned to Calgary. But Calgary/home has become a liminal space, a place of flux. After a decade of personal and collective growth, what does home even mean? ‘Red Mile’ is, for them, something like samsara: a return and a rebirth.

‘Red Mile’’s sound breathes expansive energy into the circuitous, street bound sonics of Crack Cloud’s prior material. Fizzling synths intertwine with chiming pianos. Songs layer like Russian nesting dolls; one may find a Ramones chorus set within a desolate Western prog soundtrack only to watch it erupt into a joyous anthem. Real-ass guitars — alternately lilting, scuzzy and soaring — ring out across wide sun-bleached spaces. In 2024, the cumulative effect is (in rock instrumentation terms) naturalistic. Any whiff of embalmed nostalgia is absent. Even the close of the album – a winding, alllllmost Jerry Garcia guitar noodle that leads us out of ‘Red Mile’ – is delivered without sentimentality.

Principal songwriter Zach Choy’s lyrics are cutting but merciful, with a sharp self awareness that never slides into self-satisfaction. Crack Cloud as artists are critical — and ultimately as forgiving — of themselves as they are the melting world around them. The songs balance an easy charm and cathartic power: affirming life without denying death.

Recorded predominantly between the outskirts of Joshua Tree California, and Calgary, Alberta, this record is informed by a bittersweet mélange of old and new. The sprawling, novelistic structures of their previous albums are condensed and sharpened, while maintaining their refusal to delve into superficiality. Through playful melodies and elliptical guitar soliloquy, they deliver a final product of exceptional depth and distinctly unprecious warmth. Crack Cloud have produced a mature, vital work that interrogates the platitudes of the rock-n-roll lifestyle, but ultimately exalts its sacredness.

‘Red Mile’’s de facto thesis statement “The Medium” is itself a rock song meditation: an ode to the form and its practitioners. This genre that — typical, repeatable, corporatized as it can be — somehow still has the power to help us live through life. We see the dusty sentiment of “I love rock and roll” exhumed, taken apart, and stitched back together. It’s a song guided by faith — if the medium helps us proclaim our love today, it’s worth protecting from derision tomorrow. We live in an era where music seems to love hitting its head against the wall. Crack Cloud’s ‘Red Mile’ is the sound — the feeling! — of the bricks giving way.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Though there are little nods here to the musical greats of the 70's and 80's, that Cure Guitar tone for example, or The Ramones' vocal snarl, it's never anything but classic Crack Cloud. They've got an uncanny ability to make you think you know where it's going and then drastically veer into the weird and wonderful. Never was that more evident than on the brilliant Red Mile.

TRACK LISTING

SIDE A
1. Crack Of Life
2. The Medium
3. Blue Kite
4. Lack Of Lack

SIDE B
5. Epitaph
6. I Am (I Was)
7. Ballad Of Billy
8. Lost On The Red Mile

Dinked Edition Bonus CD:
1. Wretched Ways - US38Y2446309
2. Down The Drain - US38Y2446310

"Half multimedia art studio, half experimental musical group- the Vancouver-based collective better known as Crack Cloud took over Evolutionary Arts Hackney with their massive genre-bending sound in October 2022.

Fresh from the September 16th release of their sophomore record Tough Baby, this performance with six piece choir and strings (the band totalled seventeen on stage), for one night only was recorded and documented on film and presented here as Crack Cloud - Crackin Up Live in London. A legendary band at a legendary venue"