Last spring, we premiered the video for "Found a Sparkle" from Brooklyn's Sheen Marina. That song was a short burst of experimental noise pop. In addition to playing in Sheen Marina, guitarist Justin Mayfield has been crafting solo songs since 2010. Mayfield has given his project the name Tag Cloud and compiled those songs into the album Gnarly, and we've got one of those tracks today.
"Leafy," says Mayfield, "is another track where the lyrics are largely taken from broken imagery in dreams, but I also think it's about how inundated we are with information daily. It's easy to confuse and mislabel thoughts, facts, opinions, and observations because we're always taking things in and not giving ourselves enough time to stop and stare, or let our brains wander, or look at a tree and just think about what's in front of our eyes for a second. In my head, this all leads to us being prone to being taken advantage of by the more powerful entities, as we're distracted and confused by a barrage of media, and this overwhelming feeling resembles a piece of / the beginning of the world ending (chaos). Or it's just growing pains of an advanced civilization. Who knows?"
"Leafy" is jazzy art rock. Almost like an antidote to some of the information overload Mayfield talks about, it's calm, laid-back, and much dreamier than Mayfield's other band.
Tag Cloud has an interesting plan for releasing Gnarly. The idea is to reveal each track at different online outlets, separated by a few weeks at a time, via premieres like this one, until the entire album is out. Each song will come with its own individual artwork that, when taken together, will form the whole album cover. We're happy to be a part of that.
