There’s something to be said about Midwestern generosity and kindness. It’s a stereotype that exists in the same way that, say, Philadelphians constantly have a chip on their collective shoulders, or New Yorkers are often reliably smug in their coolness. So when you get a chance to talk to a Midwestern band like Cloakroom (the pride of Indiana), it’s still a little disarming to be met with that familiar welcomeness. What’s really disarming is the fact that the band in question is one of the most consistently capital-H heavy, inventive bands going — think Hum with (somehow) more titanic guitars and an even burlier rhythm section.

Over now four albums, the trio have mixed Sleep’s stoner crush with bottomlessly doomy shoegaze, curating an intimidating but surprisingly hooky oeuvre. It’s music that you’d assume well-meaning criminals would make. But instead, the gentlemen of Cloakroom are as affable and polite and enthusiastic interview subjects as you’d expect a late-’90s boy band to be. “We’re all one,” explains ultra-zen bassist and de-facto band leader Bobby Markos, alongside frontman Doyle Martin and hardcore lifer Tim Remis behind the kit. It makes sense. Martin walks his dog during our Zoom call; Remis makes lentil soup.

Last Leg Of The Human Table, their new record out today, is as coalescent and approachable as anything they’ve ever made — especially coming off 2022’s Dissolution Wave, a deep-space Western concept record about an asteroid miner and the flimsy relationship humanity and art share. This time, Cloakroom have come back down to earth a little bit, with music influenced by the Beatles, late-night cruises, and (because we’re all human) I Think You Should Leave.

“A lot of the songs were demoed out on my phone,” Martin explains. “I was driving a lot at night. And so my phone has an old version of GarageBand. And that’s as far as it gets… it’s not very lofty, it’s very simple.”

Markos adds, “Moving from writing a concept record to [Last Leg Of The Human Table], the way it was approached was very much the same. When it came to Dissolution Wave, [Martin] did demos he recorded on his phone, and we built around them. This record started off very much the same.”

The resulting album might be the band’s finest effort yet, infusing surprisingly poppy elements into Cloakroom’s sound without forgoing the spaced-out heaviness. Stream Last Leg Of The Human Table below and read our interview about its influences.

I Think You Should Leave

DOYLE MARTIN: I joke that the show I Think You Should Leave is the overall influence for the album.

What’s everyone’s favorite sketch?

MARTIN: “I don’t want to be around anymore.” There’s so much going on in there.

TIM REMIS: “Shirt brothers” [laughing]. I guess that’s an influence? We watched a lot of it.

Morrissey

There’s a lyric I really like on “Ester Wind” that goes “If you live long enough, you’ll be laughing in disgust.”

MARTIN: I think it’s Morrissey bullshit.

Do you guys really want to get into… that?

MARTIN: No! [laughs]

I saw him play the Royal Albert Hall supporting You Are the Quarry when I was a teenager. And it had been sold out for like, you know, a couple of months. But I somehow got will-call tickets, fourth row center.

MARTIN: Probably one of the last times he played, too?

No. Without storming off the stage? Probably.

REMIS: I want a good storm-off video for us one day.

You guys should get in a fight.

MARTIN: We talked about staging one.

Have you ever been close to having a fight, aside from like an argument?

MARTIN: I littered once and Bobby was really mad at me.

MARKOS: I was really mad about that.

Wire, Robert Palmer, And Maybe Some Latent Gin Blossoms

I might be totally off about this, but I feel like the song “Unbelonging” could be wedged into a playlist between Toad The Wet Sprocket and the Gin Blossoms?

MARTIN: No, it’s [inspired by] that Robert Palmer song, “Johnny And Mary.” Is that what it is?

MARKOS: Yeah, it’s “Johnny And Mary.”

MARTIN: I saw [Gin Blossoms] at a casino once.

Were they any good?

MARTIN: Set was so cool! [Robin Wilson] was like taking voicemails onstage.

What a dear. And I hear that kind of thing in “The Story Of The Egg” a lot, too.

MARKOS: We recorded that song and listened to it a lot, and then we went on tour, [and we] started playing that song live. When we played it live, I locked in so much with Tim, our drummer, obviously as a rhythm section. And the rhythm was so influenced by 1970s post-punk, like Wire and Television and stuff like that. So it was like super heavy-handed bass playing and drumming in the pocket. That’s what I always would refer to [“Egg”] as our Wire song, you know. But then when I started listening to the record again, and hearing Doyle’s guitar playing, it’s like, “Oh my goodness, this is really the most — if you had to call it shoegaze — this was the best example of shoegaze on the record,” just because his guitar parts are so amorphous and big and meandering-sounding. That was my favorite guitar tone he got on the record. So, I thought that that song really best represented like the duality of Cloakroom.

The Beatles

MARKOS: When Doyle and I hang out and we’re recording together, we’re jamming or even really just like spending time together like we do, and we end up talking about the Beatles a lot. I self-admittedly have been in a huge Beatles phase my entire 30s. I enjoyed the Beatles growing up. I grew up in a Beatles household. But for whatever reason, when I rounded the corner into my fourth decade, I really just kind of latched on to the Beatles and started to appreciate them on a more songwriting basis.

You know, how they progressed as a band. And then obviously still wrote very accessible music. Maybe being more influenced by someone like the Beatles, versus like earlier in our career when we were influenced by Earth and Codeine and bands like that.

Last Leg Of The Human Table is out now via Closed Casket Activities.