Cola’s debut album 'Deep In View', is a radical amalgamation of the myriad musical minds of former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) and US Girls/The Weather Station drummer Evan Cartwright. Titled after a renowned conversation anthology with the philosopher Alan Watts, a key sixties figure who helped introduce Zen Buddhism into popular culture. There is a definite composure to the landscape of the album that doesn’t hold back. The entirety of the album possesses an elegant disparaging explorative introspection in the lyrics that are seized through wavering guitar riffs, staccato with smokey vocals that somehow seamlessly rip us to the center of questioning modernity.
Darcy sings on 'So Excited':
“All these petty summits, see them fall like new days
Earthen when I mount them then they paper away
A coalescing jumble of both wisdom and trash
At the centre it resеmbles something golden and ash”
There is a perfect balance of longing and acceptance that lands as novelty, a testament to a philosophy that breaks things down but also gives us something back to hold onto. The drumline and harboring base build and bow down to the lyricism in a manner that ushers the words into a destination of paralleled angst, lament and wonder. This track also stands as the first song all three members wrote together back in 2019, giving an anchored upbeat pulse of The Strokes.
The dexterity of this body of work isn’t so much where it goes, but where it sits, how it charts the anxieties technology has bred. They carefully bring a post punk melodic ease, while basking in and out of a succinct candor that leaves us with a transference of truth from Darcy’s spoken style of singing.
It is rewarding to see the evolution of Dacry’s lyrics from previous projects, although with a continued attention to human connection, there is a more isolated temperature with an added technological web of worry. “Gossamer” packs heat with a tethered drum beat and snare builds he laments:
"I feel abrasions like a seawall feels the rain, Oh, the constant rocking and the roaming, it’s like medicine in my brain"
It’s like a pragmatic sigh, a prayer of reason. His willful vocals stand strong against the rather solem quaking of his words, carried by a tempo that breaks nothing down. We are governed to take it as it is, a rational testament to the times. There is comfort in how this album alludes to what we are powerless to, but there is such an elegant surrender through wavy guitar riffs that somehow push us to believe in something.
The reverence of this album lies in the decree of magnetic alignment both in lyrics and sound. It builds and falls, while all the while offering a space to exhale and feel held. There is a frankness, a brilliant momentum that seizes and sets down all at once. A wake of minimalist rock, Cola is keeping the pace and colliding into soundscapes that say more than technology ever could.
8/10
Words: Rae Niwa
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