Live Review: Cloud Control

From start to finish, Cloud Control's prodigious concert for Vivid Live was awash with nostalgia. There seemed to be two kinds of reminiscence happening here: on the one hand, the band's warm mono sounds hark back to classic 1960s sounds, but there was also something else – a vague kind of longing for the days when Cloud Control shows on Australian soil were not exceptional but routine.

The set seemed to alternate between new material and old. There seems to have been slight shifts in the band's sound – a new element of deliberation, of care, that clings to every chord. This shift has given the band a new element of depth and feeling; Cloud Control is no longer simply playing whimsical bliss pop. There is more use of silence in this new material, more complex arrangements; Heidi Lenffer's organ brings forth the most beautiful, haunting melodies, while Alister Wright's guitar solos have become even better somehow – more gritty, more complex, than before.

Lyrically, too, there seems to have been a kind of coming of age – some of Cloud Control's new material seemed to have more depth, more substance: “Give it to me easy, give it to me hard/Then I'm gonna break your heart/Probably should have told you from the start”. It seems evident that the band have used their time away to hone their sound.

Yet all this change seems to have been built on musical elements that are Cloud Control's hallmarks – warm, analogue sounds and incandescent harmonies, a steady, tonal layer of percussion, plus just a hint of gritty real world rock'n'roll. Cloud Control has continued to deliver a heady cocktail of sound – part whimsical nostalgia, part deep, warm rock'n'roll. This sound is brand new, intoxicating, and warm and familiar in equal measure.

Cloud Control closed their set with a stormy rendition of Buffalo Country from their first EP. Members of the audience rose in twos and threes, and sometimes all on their own, to dance to the set's final track. This is a song that the band have been playing live for at least six years, and it demonstrated perfectly just how much a band can develop and improve their sound, while somehow maintaining all those magical elements that fans fell in love with in the first place.