Cloud Cult

Minneapolis’ Cloud Cult shares Eels’ love of quirky, electronic beats and cinematic soundscapes and Beck’s knack for dynamic, flashy live shows. Thematically, much of the group’s music is inspired by the 2002 death of frontman Craig Minowa’s young sonsomber subject matter that furthers the Eels comparisonsbut their visually loaded concerts feel more like colorful birthday parties than funerals. Openers Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s were unable to agree with Epic Records on a final track listing for their major-label debut, so the album arrives in two incarnations: the small-release Animal!, the band’s preferred version, and the derisively titled Not Animal, the label’s market-tested, mass-release version. Epic’s edit is the more defanged the two, stripping Animal! of its more atmospheric, Radiohead-esque moments, but it’s not like the label painted over a Rembrandt. With its cutesy, paint-by-numbers indie-pop arrangements, Animal! isn’t particularly feral, either.