Sadly, it seems like the majic is ending.
Only a month after former tour-mates Youth Lagoon did the same, Majical Cloudz has announced through social media today that they are breaking up. Including their most recent release, the Wait & See extended play, and last year's phenomenal full length Are You Alone? (which was Transverso's #2 album of 2015), the dreamy duo graced us with two LPs, two EPs, and a handful of one-off singles in the short four years since their first performance in March, 2012. Their final show is in Montreal this Thursday, March 10.
Devon Welsh and Matthew Otto combined to create some of the most sharply evocative music of our generation. A visceral series of confessions shrouded in the most soothing of soundscapes, it cut deep to the simple core and personified it in plain sight: a synthesizer, a microphone, a white shirt, an unwavering gaze.
I remember listening to Impersonator at my mother's house when it first came out. "Are you depressed or something?" she asked, and I laughed. Despite the undoubtedly melancholy outward appearance of Majical Cloudz, it was never an inherently negative emotional experience; even at their darkest points their songs are paradoxically uplifting upon the same waves of the flood that drowns you down, as ethereal melodies lift you over brooding, coursing vocals. It's a uniquely comforting closure. It's one we need now more than ever.
All along Welsh seemed to prepare us for the end. "If you won't be seen again / I hope you know you were my friend / And in my head the world will never hurt you," he offers in Are You Alone?'s aptly titled opener, "Disappeared." It's truly not easy news to swallow, but if we've learned anything from Majical Cloudz it's how to properly eulogize:
"He was obsessed, and it was okay."