Cloakroom have returned with new single “Unbelonging” – their first new music since 2022’s highly praised full-length, Dissolution Wave and label debut for Closed Casket Activities. “It’s a pop song wielding 140 bpm of optimism that can fall apart and dishearten just as quickly as it captivates – Cloakroom meets Psychedelic Furs,” the band tell.
Raised on well water, and born off the handgun highway, it almost seems too easy to slap the label “shoegaze” on the Indiana three. The band’s aesthetic at first seems far more primitive than the likes of a third-wave shoegaze band in 2024, but upon further inspection Cloakroom almost seems intellectual, at least pseudo-intellectual.
Be it the fool’s errand of traveling 3,000 miles in six days of touring or tracking an entire LP in a marathon 72-hour recording session, Cloakroom has found success operating in severe circumstances. When the human mind begins to break down from exhaustion, the three-piece works in a desperate harmony. The pressure keeps Cloakroom alive.
The visual for “Unbelonging” was filmed over the course of their recent European tour and gives listeners a glimpse into the daily operation of the enigmatic unit. “Similar to a Crowelian ceremonial dagger, all the lyrics to the new record were crafted under the cover of darkness, predominantly in a moving vehicle; predominantly leaving any number of border town bars. That’s why we chose to do a ‘found footage’ kind of delivery method for the video.”
