Crack Cloud has always been something beyond a rock band: both profound and grand, vaporous and elusive.

The first iteration of Crack Cloud was formed nearly a decade ago as a proxy-rehab outlet on the fringes of Calgary, where two EPs and their accompanying visual pieces were created during this time. By 2017, several members had relocated to Vancouver. It was after the move that the band produced their astounding 2020 album Pain Olympics, and their 2022 follow up, Tough Baby. All at once, their vision became expansive, cinematic, and precarious.

Now, their third full-length studio album, Red Mile, acts as both a tribute and a homecoming. Members have since left Vancouver and returned to Calgary; returned to the long stretch of land colloquially referred to as the red mile. But what of the time away from home? After a decade of personal and collective growth, what does home even mean? To Crack Cloud, this is the liminal message throughout Red Mile. The album, for them, is something like samsara: a return and a rebirth.

Red Mile’s eight anthems expand, wind and fold in on themselves in equal measure. They deploy gorgeous string sections, desert psych, sax blasts, group chants and punk snarls. The album breathes expansive energy into the circuitous, street bound sonics of Crack Cloud’s prior material. Fizzling synths intertwine with chiming pianos. The songs balance an easy charm and cathartic power: affirming life without denying death.