By Blake Maddux

What is it about Final Summer that makes it a very good Cloud Nothings album but not a great one?

Clevelander Dylan Baldi — who called Western Mass home for a year in the mid-2010s — has built his band’s reputation on a mix of noise rock and pop sweetness that is, to my ears, reminiscent of Hüsker Dü, The Pixies, and The Jesus and Mary Chain.

While Cloud Nothings is not strictly a hardcore punk, heavy metal, or power pop band, they have numerous songs that would not sound out of place on a playlist of any of those genres. Moreover, the seven-to-eleven-minute workouts that appeared on several of their pre-2016 records have the potential to pique the interest of prog rock fans.

And like the titular atmospheric phenomenon in their moniker, Cloud Nothings’ sound can be dark or ominous or a beautiful decoration patterned against an azure sky. Moreover, the lyrics — like the shapes of those patterns — are frequently open to individual interpretation.

Given the powerful impression that Baldi’s compositions made right out of the gate, it is unsurprising that their early efforts received what have probably been, even if only by a nose, the best reviews to date.

However, as with many artists, what listeners enjoy most by Cloud Nothings likely depends on where they start.

While the Arts Fuse’s Alex Szeptycki, who was clearly familiar with the band’s previous releases, was not particularly enthusiastic about 2020’s The Black Hole Understands (click for his review), I — along with AllMusic’s Heather Phares — am particularly fond of 2021’s The Shadow I Remember. (Granted, this was not where I started, but it’s where I climbed back aboard after missing the two LPs that preceded it.)

Cloud Nothings’ brand new release, Final Summer, changes two erstwhile constants for the band.

First, the former quartet is pared back to a trio consisting of singer/songwriter /guitarist Baldi, bassist Chris Brown, and drummer Jayson Gerycz following the departure of the ever-present bassist TJ Duke and the brief tenure of his replacement, Noah Depew.

Second, they have switched labels, leaving their longtime (11 years, six albums) home of Carpark Records for Pure Noise, whose roster includes Boston’s Born Without Bones.

Something that hasn’t changed is that Final Summer’s 11 songs, like Shadow’s same number and Black Hole’s 10, average almost exactly three minutes.

So what is it about Final Summer that makes it a very good Cloud Nothings album but not a great one? One thing is its aforementioned predecessor. While I am hesitant to say that it stands alone as Baldi’s finest achievement, it is certainly a difficult act to follow.

Second, Baldi’s lyric writing comes up a bit short on a few of these 10 songs. Whereas he would have spent a few entire verses fleshing out his “existential dread” (Alex Szeptycki’s words) on previous albums, he is less generous with details here.

For example, “I’d Get Along” includes only nine words, “The Golden Halo” contains only a single verse (as do, admittedly, the otherwise superior title track and “Thank Me For Playing”), and “Running Through the Campus” just doesn’t make much of an impression. Granted, there is nothing innately wrong with having fewer lyrics rather than more. However, I just don’t think that strategy pays off in the case of the former two.

So am I saying that Final Summer isn’t a very good record? No.

“Mouse Policy,” “Silence,” “Thank Me for Playing,” “Common Mistake,” and the album’s namesake — with its Feelies-esque intro — are all superb. And even those that I criticized sound pretty good and are sure to have you bopping your head and singing along.

So while I do not think that Final Summer is one Baldi’s best efforts, my bet is that the inclusions from it will fit in seamlessly alongside previously released material at Cloud Nothings’ May 6 show at Crystal Ballroom.

Blake Maddux is a freelance journalist who regularly contributes to the Arts Fuse, Somerville Times, and Beverly Citizen. He has also written for DigBoston, the ARTery, Lynn Happens, the Providence Journal, The Onion’s A.V. Club, and the Columbus Dispatch. A native Ohioan, he moved to Boston in 2002 and currently lives with his wife and six-year-old twins — Elliot Samuel and Xander Jackson — in Salem, MA.