Cloud Cult: Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)

The accidental death of Craig Minowa's infant son

in 2002 has understandably dominated his songwriting. It's fair to say that the

tragedy is the key to understanding his music, including Cloud Cult's sixth

disc, Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes). But he very rarely deals

with it by being maudlin or excessively dark; rather than brooding, he deals

with his grief by using it to explore more universal themes about the fragility

and beauty of life, the importance of love, and finding peace amid devastation.

Ghosts—self-released on Minowa's environmentally

conscious label—finds the Minnesota band more vibrant and creative than

ever, surpassing last year's The Meaning Of 8 with even lusher

orchestration that draws on classical, electronica, folk, and Flaming

Lips-esque indie-rock. Though it's an extended meditation on mortality that

includes the declaration "There's so much more to see in the darkest places," Ghosts sounds surprisingly

innocent and joyful; where The Polyphonic Spree's optimism sometimes seems

creepily facile, for Cloud Cult, it seems like hard-earned wisdom. At its

highest points, it approaches transcendence, as on "When Water Comes To Life,"

which turns a description of a child's autopsy into a heartbreakingly lyrical

statement of what's left after we die: water, sand, and memories.