Nasty Fancy

Becoming a journalist wasn’t my first career choice, but I went with it thinking maybe one day I can write about music. And because I won the spelling bee one time, so I figured this was my calling. Totally kidding. The only thing standing in the way of my dream of becoming a music journalist was that I came from a suburban town where the only bands who got together did it for the laughs or for my high school’s talent show it held every year.

A few months ago, I was checking my email and came across a message from Urban Outfitters with the subject line reading “Music Monday.” They had me at music because God knows I can’t afford their clothes. I opened it and noticed that Cloud Nothings were that week’s featured artist. Before this email, I admittedly hadn’t gotten to know this Cleveland band everyone had been raving about, but this was my motivation. Turns out, a couple of these guys were from that suburban town I was telling you about: Medina.

I suddenly started paying attention to their every move.

It all started with the video I watched that day. It was for the song “No Future/ No Past” and it was directed by John Ryan Manning. Having gone to high school with Ryan (who I know him as), the “weirdness” of this video came as no surprise to me, along with the rest of his videos. And actually this video is probably the least weird of them all. Him and his friends, including Cloud Nothing’s drummer, Jayson Gerycz, always did their own thing, and I loved that about them.

Years later it’s really cool to see what these guys are up to.

In this video, which Ryan talks about in the podcast as being his favorite concept, a man is being dragged through the entire video. Pretty simple, yet so intriguing. I have to say my favorite part of this video is the evolution of this man’s emotions. It worked really well with the progression of the music.

This video depicts a teenage love, which is exactly what I thought of when I first heard this track minus the whole sucking braids part. Ryan talks about this video’s concept in the podcast as well and how he came up with it.

You can expect to see one or two more videos for the Cloud Nothings from Ryan in the future. One of the videos will be for the song “Fall In” which Ryan says is going to be the best video yet. Want to know why? Go listen to the podcast! And then go check out all of John Ryan Manning’s videos here.