An interview with Cloakroom

The Indiana trio discuss their new album, 'Last Leg of the Human Table', writing shorter songs for shorter attention spans, no longer embarrassing their folks, and being champions like the '90s Bulls.

I’m not gonna try and hide my excitement: I was jonesing hard for this new Cloakroom album. When the Northwest Indiana band of Doyle Martin, Bobby Markos, and Tim Remis dropped their song “Unbelonging” last October, it straight up gave me the feels. Luckily I was able to see them play just a few weeks later in Toronto with SPY, Full of Hell and Better Lovers, and while they didn’t play that song live, seeing them do even just a 20-minute set (abbreviated due to border issues) intensified the anticipation for that next album so much for me. When I finally did hear Last Leg of the Human Table, I do remember making an extremely premature declaration to a friend that it was gonna be my favourite album of 2025 - despite it only being January.

That Cloakroom smashed my expectations with their new album comes as no surprise. Their career arc has seen them traverse heavy music through a number of stylistic pivots, each blowing the last one way: from the stoner doomcore of 2013’s debut EP Infinity, to 2015’s Further Out and its fuzz-laden slowcore, to 2017’s Time Well, a formidable and psychedelic post-rock odyssey, to Dissolution Wave, a self-described “post-apocalyptic space western” that saw them transform into melodic shoegaze titans. Cloakroom’s music just seems to substantially expand and enhance each time around.

Artists always strive to improve upon their previous release, and Last Leg of the Human Table feels like a true game-changer for the band. Cloakroom has never been a band to rest on their laurels, and with album number four they have hung on to the best trademarks of their past while introducing new tricks that offer something more atmospheric and euphonious than anything before it.

At a time when the world is turning to complete shit, this album is arriving just in time to give their fans a lifeline that - for at least 37 minutes - can help drown out all of the disheartening noise that we’re constantly bombarded with.

In an interview you did for the last album, you said, “I think the next thing you hear from us will be really surprising.” And you were totally right. How important was it to take that next step with this album?

Bobby Markos: I think Doyle and I, we've always really tried to kind of not flex the songwriting muscle, but when Doyle and I write songs together, most of the time he shows them to me in their acoustic demos and they sound like country songs. With Further Out and Time Well, by the time the listener heard it, there were ten layers of fuzz bass on it and huge Led Zeppelin sounding drums. So that was just one instance of those songs. I think with Dissolution Wave and now with Last Leg of the Human Table, instead of going 100 percent in the direction we usually did, we were like, “Well, this song started this way, what if it went another way?” We started to explore the sonic range more and more than we previously have as musicians. Especially with Tim in the fold now, the three of us are bringing such an eclectic palette to the table, the songwriting table. Doyle listens to different stuff than I do, I listen to different stuff than Tim does, etc. So we all have different reference points. I think this trio really has shown an ability to play a lot of different types of sounds, and we've really just been getting into exploring that on the last two records.

Doyle Martin: I think especially over the length of a record, you’ve got to try a bunch of different stuff. When I make a record I want to make every song sound like a different experience.

BM: Dynamic has always been such a principal part of Cloakroom's songwriting approach, whether it be in the song or in the part and now more so across an album. It really shows up when we put together our live sets, because then we can be like, “All right, well, it starts off here, and then it comes down here, and then we can sculpt out these peaks and valleys.” Those sonic peaks and valleys really mess with the dynamic, whereas I don't think we've ever had much interest in just existing in one register as a band. We've always wanted to try to have a lot of different sounds.

That was one of the things I really liked about that tour, you just did because obviously you sound pretty different from SPY, Full of Hell and Better Lovers. That tour offered more contrast with a band like Cloakroom on the bill. As a band did you notice that? Or did it just feel like you were touring with friends?

DM: I just think that it’s always a better experience than just a bunch of the same thing. But that was not a necessity, you know, it just seems normal to me. That was a good lineup. Were you at the Toronto show? There was some live review and the guy said that one of the members of Cloakroom was a killer.

Really?

BM: Yeah, I saw that in some guy's blog. He wrote a live review and said one of us was a murderer. That was a good mention.

DM: Oh, yeah, I killed someone.

BM: No, the crowd thought that I was the criminal. They may have been right.

DM: They'll never know. But no one in this band has killed anybody. We should get that out in the air.

BM: This is the time to clarify that.

Okay, I'll be the one to relay the word that you guys are not murderers. You did, however, record part of the album at Electrical Audio in late 2023. Was Steve Albini [the studio’s late co-owner/audio engineer] in the building while you were there?

BM: I saw him. We didn't interact with him, but I went to the kitchen at one point to get a glass of water and he was in there making coffee. But I've got a thing where any time I see somebody of any notoriety, I usually just observe them and leave. I've never wanted to be like, “Oh my goodness it's so great to meet you.” I'm sure he got that all the time. And he was clearly in his domain, just making coffee. He probably meets a hundred people a day. So I was just glad I saw that. To me that was more wholesome to observe him in his natural environment than it would have been to get a picture with him or shake his hand.

DM: Also to put it in perspective, we couldn't stay there because there was some health protocol thing going on. Steve was still double masked. There was a health factor thing going on here and I didn't want to bother him. They have an Obama room with a big Obama blanket and these nice little beds and everything there. We just couldn't stay.

BM: There was some issue where the rooms needed to be inspected or something in order for them to be considered for lodging by the city of Chicago so they could get whatever tax clearances or something. It was just a weird logistical thing that they we weren't legally allowed to stay there. I think it was because of the zoning, that it wasn’t a city-cleared lodging. There was some hee-haw long explanation.

I know you recorded a cover of Songs:Ohia’s “Steve Albini's Blues” a number of years ago. Did you pick Electrical Audio because of him?

DM: Well, our friend Zac, a sound engineer from Chicago suggested it. And we’ve always wanted to go there. I love that YouTube video of them recording Josephine there. I think they just recorded that last record in its entirety there. There's a lot of good footage.

BM: Also, we’ve never had the means to do it. We never had a budget that probably would have been sufficient to do it for more than a day or so. And I think at the time, the plan had only been for two songs, so it just made sense to set out that way. But it is kind of a Midwest band right of passage to be able to go there. I had never even really been in there before and I wanted to experience it at least once, and then the opportunity presented itself. So we kind of just jumped on it.

I love short albums. Dissolution Wave was pretty short, but this album is technically even shorter. Cloakroom has had some long-ass songs over the years, especially earlier on. Have you been trying to keep songs a bit more curtailed and concise or is that just where your attention spans are right now?

DM: I’d say you definitely you hit the nail on the head: it's my dwindling attention span.

BM: It was funny, when Doyle and I were putting together the bio for this record, Doyle wanted to make the point that this was our shortest record to date. And I couldn't find the actual readout time wise, so I had to add it up myself. Overall I figured out that this album is one second shorter than Dissolution Wave. Time Well eclipsed an hour and I think there was definitely a time when I loved bands that could put together an hour-long album, like Radiohead. There can be so much to say, you know, if you put together an hour-long album. But I think we had just done the long instrumental pieces for so long that we wanted to try our hand at like writing more concise, pop-minded songs, to show that we could do that as well. Dissolution Wave was a pretty big departure from what came before it. And I think that Last Leg of the Human Table is even more of a departure than what came before it. Maybe we'll get below the three-minute mark here on the next record.

DM: We should come up with the campaign: “Blink and you'll miss it. Cloakroom’s shortest record!” We can still do it. There's still time. We should make Justin [Louden] do it.

BM: Blink and you'll miss it? I like that.

Have they already been pressed? Do you have copies of the album?

BM: We don't have any. I think they're probably in the mail. Justin at our label Closed Casket Activities sent us some photos and they look great, really cool. So hopefully we'll be getting them any day now.

I ordered the red variant with the sparkly glitter.

DM: Cool. That was a popular item. I'm glad you got one.

What's funny is I had to order it from Evil Greed in Europe. With the conversion and shipping rates, it’s cheaper to order from overseas than it is from the U.S. How backwards is that?

DM: Wow. We're so close. It doesn't make any sense.

Your previous albums have had themes or narratives running through them. Is there one with Last Leg of the Human Table?

DM: No. I don't think there's a narrative. Like you said, it's such a diverse record that there's all kinds of things happening. But, it does feel like… for example, we're talking about shipping! Like, what the hell? Why does it take this much… it’s like planned obsolescence… I don't know. It feels like we're losing our humanity as people.

In the bio, there's a line that says “America's lost its soul,” which I feel the album title might be referring to. I don't want to get too deep into it because I know you guys have a new president and he's threatening these tariffs on Canada, which is…

DM: Yeah, our record is going to be even more expensive!

Is it difficult to see things through a lens of optimism when you guys are writing songs?

DM: I mean, I think that's why we do it though, is to be optimistic. And our music is always really tongue-in-cheek anyways. But I wouldn't say it's a political record. I'm thinking maybe even me personally, like, wow, I've become less of a human over the last three years that I wrote this record.

BM: I feel like the records are always deeply personal feeling. Whoever we are as people, when we get together to write them, every album cycle is this weird little time capsule of who you were for those few years while you were doing it. I feel like every time we write a record, I always come to it with some form of new perspective. That would basically just inform the way I'm playing bass or whatever. But yeah, I would say it’s probably a lot more personal than it was political.

Doyle, you just said that you try to be optimistic with your songs and I would say this album sounds more uplifting than other Cloakroom records, which I think has to do with the melodies being so strong. In the bio, you mention genres that you're leaning towards, including pop. And I was just wondering, like, what does the word pop mean to a band like Cloakroom?

DM: I don't know. What you think, Bobby - is George Harrison pop?

BM: Yeah, I'd say that he's probably the form of pop we're most interested in emulating. Like what is pop, you know, but popular music?

DM: “Got My Mind Set On You”?

My wife and I played that song at our wedding.

DM: Aww, it’s so good! Hell yeah! At Bobby's wedding his brother-in-law played a George Harrison song.

BM: Yeah, my wife and I, our first dance was to “If Not For You,” which is technically a Bob Dylan song, but you know, we did the George Harrison version. It’s much better. But when I think of pop music, I just think of it being clear, concise songwriting, that is less long-winded and more memorable. And I think Doyle's got such a great knack for writing melodies and he's such a great lyricist that it's fun to hear him come up with choruses and tailor our songwriting so that a little bit more than just four bars of Doyle singing and then us jamming for eight minutes. I think we're just exploring other types of songwriting that we didn't do before.

So do you find that writing kind of hooks and melodies comes naturally to you, Doyle?

DM: I think it's something you’ve got to work on. Then you run out of notes and tricks. You’ve got to do more research and, I don't know, start to like other things, broaden your horizon, and maybe that helps write a song.

Bobby, you mentioned that when Doyle was giving some of the songs to you, they basically just sounded like, you know, country songs…

[Tim joins the call.]

Hi Tim!

DM: Yeah!

Tim Remis: Just got back.

BM: Sorry. Go ahead Cam.

A song like “Bad Larry,” which I saw described as alt-country by a website the other day. For me, that song feels like a watershed moment for Cloakroom because it could really open up the band to a whole new audience. And I realized this when I was playing it for my wife the other night, and she was like, “This is nice. What is it?” She was really into it. Whereas when I’ve played Cloakroom before she would ask me to turn it off.

BM: Starting with Time Well, we had a song called “The Sun Won't Let Us Go” that I thought was beautiful, and I thought it was kind of overlooked. It was recorded with acoustic guitars. And you really need to go back to Further Out, which had “Clean Moon.” So we've always dipped our our toes in soft-spoken, melodic songs like that. Obviously, on Dissolution Wave I'm immensely proud of “Doubts.” I thought that was one of the best recordings we've ever made. But yeah, “Bad Larry,” that one, I think, structurally was the closest thing to a pop song we've ever written. Doyle brought the choruses; it had a repeat, it was verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, very simply structured in a way that we don't normally do. Normally we stray away from that formula, but with that one we kept it simple.

I kept saying this when we were listening back to it, after we had put all the bells and whistles on it, I was excited that it came out sounding like an Everly Brothers song. Like I thought it sounded more like the 1950s rock that maybe my grandparents were listening to than it did, you know, alt-country. I'll take alt-country though, that's fine, but man, I think it sounds like an Everly Brothers song. And I had a similar moment to you, Cam. My parents are obviously big Cloakroom supporters, but that was a song I played for them and they were like, “Wow, that is truly a great song.” And I was like, “Okay, thank you, I'll take it.” I'm glad that my parents have one Cloakroom song they really, really like. They can play that for their friends and not be embarrassed.

The bio mentions shoegaze, which I tend to write about a lot. My favourite song on the album is “Story of the Egg,” which is one of the ‘gaziest songs Cloakroom has released. What is your level of interest and involvement in that music?

DM: Well, I don't know, it is crazy to wake up and be in a band for 10 years and hear that we are all of a sudden shoegaze. But, I don't know, we've always liked that sound of using a big muff and a reverb pedal. I've always been drawn to that kind of music, but it's cool that it's got a big resurgence now and it's crazy to see like all these young kids know Swirlies lyrics. I'm like, holy moly, that's pretty impressive. So stick with it!

BM: I think initially when we were getting the shoegaze comparisons probably somewhere between Further Out and Time Well in our career. I think initially we thought we were shoegaze adjacent. Like obviously Doyle has always used reverb, delay and fuzz pedals, but I think that some of the guitar work that Doyle laid down on this new record, I think has a lot more of a shoegaze feel than previously. Especially on “Story of the Egg.” Those guitars are really reminiscent of what you would have heard on like Loveless in the ‘90s, which is cool.

Well, Doyle also plays in Nothing and I was just wondering if being in that band ever creeps into what you guys are doing in Cloakroom?

DM: I think so. I think it's all experiential and I try to learn something new every day. I've learned a lot from being in that band and I’ll play in any kind of project if it's good.

I read somewhere that seeing Codeine live was really the genesis of what brought you together to form Cloakroom. I can hear some Codeine in earlier songs like “Mind Funeral” and “Lossed Over,” but was the original idea to be more of a slowcore-type band?

DM: I just wanted to play less busy things.

BM: Doyle and Brian [Busch] had a song written that never ended up becoming a Cloakroom song, but it was cool. It was more mid-tempo and it definitely had more in common with what we're playing nowadays than what we would have started playing then. But Doyle asked me to play with them and before we were going to write or sit down with the riffs we had, I had a song written that was “Mind Funeral.” That song wasn't going to work for the band that I was in at the time. And so I brought that to Doyle, who had bits and pieces of what would become “Sedimentary,” “E,” and “Bending” off that first record [Infinity]. We did go see Codeine play on that first reunion tour, and I think when we sat down with those riffs the initial thought was, “Let's slow them down to a Codeine speed.” Or like Earth, who we were both really into at the time. And then the dynamic became, “Let's have quiet verses and loud choruses, because that was like what Codeine did.” Especially on something like “Lossed Over.” The verse is so sparse, and then those huge fuzz pedals come on in the chorus, and it's so downplayed like that. But I think seeing [Codeine] play was moving enough that we decided to kind of shift sonically towards that a little bit. And then once we started writing for Further Out that followed us there. We kept the slower tempo going for a long time.

And now you’ve got faster tempos on this new album.

DM: I think just listening to Sweet Cobra evolve into writing faster, catchier songs is what got me to write them too.

BM: Yeah, our drummer Tim's other band, Sweet Cobra, which he plays bass and sings in, have got a lot of up-tempo, catchy songs that Doyle and I love a lot. So we make Tim play fast songs in our band.

Tim, did you come to Cloakroom expecting to rest a little by play slower tempos?

TR: I've always just been on a quest to be in the band closest to musically being the drummer in like Curtis Mayfield's band. I know that you might not think that they're similar, but the grooves are there, they’re just really slowed down. A lot of my earlier contributions were definitely trying to create a kind of vibe more than challenge the ideas of structure and all that stuff. I was trying to have a really groovy pocket, just a vibe that is as musical as it can be. But as a drummer I do really like playing slow and messing with the concepts of time and meter and speed and all that stuff, to try to take someone that's listening on some kind of weird, wonky brain journey. We play some songs from Dissolution Wave live about 20 to 30 percent slower. It's fun to watch people that know our music with these expressions on their face, where they're almost so unsure they feel like they're swimming in pudding or something. That was my first question in this interview and I totally tanked!

So when you guys are rehearsing the new album, are you changing the songs much?

DM: I think so, right? We did a couple of things.

TR: I think they changed a lot for me while we were playing on tour. I don't know how much in rehearsals. I feel like from day one, some of the stuff that's on the new album, the way we were playing as a band was totally different. I think our evolution has come more from just playing songs live than they do in the rehearsal setting.

DM: Never play the same thing twice.

I'm a sports fan. So I kind of compare being on record labels to being on teams. And you guys have moved to Closed Casket Activities from Relapse. What drew you to change labels?

TR: Well, Justin's like mid-90s Phil Jackson as far as a coach. He's a winner. He's got us studying Buddhism, he makes us play poker, and has other like activities that we do with the other bands on his label for camaraderie. He sometimes makes us just stay in a bunkhouse together, even if we're not rehearsing or on tour. And I think these are important philosophies to apply to the bands on your roster. I feel supported. I feel like I'm learning something. We're getting sharper. He's turning us into lethal weapons. He's turning us into champions.

So based on geography, I'm going to guess you guys lean more towards the Bulls, not the Lakers then?

TR: Oh, we're the Bulls and I'm Steve Kerr. Both politically and athletically, I identify with him the most.

DM: I'm Larry Bird.

TR: I always thought that Bill Cartwright had a great beard and was hanging out with young dudes playing sports. And he always seemed cool. I'm going to change mine to Bill Cartwright.

BM: I say we have more common with the ‘90s Bulls than we do the early ‘00s Lakers. I feel like the ‘90s Bulls evolved. They weren't expected to be winners. They were in the shadow of the Lakers, Celtics, and then the Pistons. So they were these scrappy underdogs that became household names. Whereas the Lakers were winning championships since the NBA formed. Who cares, right?

TR: I do think this is a good analogy though because I have heard a lot about that era of the Bulls, that they didn't just like go home to their mansions. Those dudes hung out all the time. Albeit, usually doing terrible, terrible things. But it is pretty punk rock to think about these guys on a team going out there doing bad things after hours, deep into the night, all as a team.

If it’s okay, I’d like to switch sports. I wanted to close on this because I know Bobby is really into NASCAR. Maybe it's from growing up in Canada, but I just don’t get the appeal of NASCAR. How do you sell NASCAR to somebody who doesn't really understand the sport of just driving laps on a track?

BM: That's tough. I think there are a lot of compelling parts of auto racing where you can either come at it from a psychological standpoint or an automotive standpoint. If you're not interested in cars, that's out the window. So psychologically, the thing that's the most compelling to me about it - and I tell people this all the time, and I don't know if this is going to do anything for you - but I can sit here and have a conversation with race drivers very much the same way I'm sitting here and having a conversation with you three. Okay. And after the four of us adjourn from this interview, you know, I'm going to go on a run with my wife. Tim's going to drive home. Doyle's going to put another log on the fire. Cam, you might have dinner with your wife. But if I was talking to a race driver, at some point, he's going to strap into a vehicle and he's going to drive it 250 miles an hour. So they're normal on the surface, but there is some weird psychological break that race drivers can put themselves through to do something that is completely beyond human means. And that to me is just the most fascinating part. Race car drivers are the most unassuming people in the world, yet they do the most inhuman thing for a living, if that makes sense.

Have you driven a NASCAR car, Bobby?

BM: No, never. I've ridden in a couple race cars and at very low speeds and I have zero desire to go at high speed or drive one myself. It's utterly terrifying to me, which might actually be another piece of my fascination with it. I know the fear level it puts in me to think about doing it. So to see people do it at such a high level is like, you might as well be doing open heart surgery. It's unfathomable to me.

I saw an image online of a Cloakroom race car. Was that real?

BM: It was a mock-up for something that's called iRacing, which is simulation, online racing, like video games, but also for competition. People do sim racing for a living, but the simulator is also used by car manufacturers for their racing teams to practice, for car development too. So it's hyper realistic. I have had a relationship with Dale Earnhardt Jr. through my work. I worked for his production company and I had shown him Cloakroom and he thought it was cool. He likes a lot of ‘90s music.

DM: Dale likes Hum.

That's pretty cool.

BM: He had mentioned doing a T-shirt or something with another friend’s band back in a day. And I was like, “Oh yeah, we'll have to do a Cloakroom-Dale collaboration.” And we kind of just dreamt up doing a car, you know, for iRacing or whatever - a skin as they call it.

DM: Bobby had told me that it was a real car. I just want to let him know. So this is the first time I am hearing that it wasn’t actually real. I'm pretty upset.

Catch Cloakroom on tour this spring. Get your tickets here.