Chris Cohen writes songs so mild and candy they appear to virtually nuzzle up towards you, however he hasn’t all the time meant to be a steward of consolation. “I feel that there’s one thing in my music that individuals misread as like, contentment or being chill,” he advised Flaunt in 2020, lamenting the occasions he’s observed his laid-back bed room pop crop up as background music in eating places or at City Outfitters. “It is perhaps one thing that I’m not succeeding at as a musician that makes folks suppose that I feel the world is okay and we should always simply really feel good,” he mentioned. “That’s like, the very last thing that I would like folks to get from my music.”
Cohen’s curse may be that he’s too adept at crafting beautiful, heavenly little songs. If there’s one throughline between the assorted initiatives he’s been part of—be it Deerhoof, Weyes Blood, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, or the Curtains—it’s this sense of him tapping out cracks within the edges of sentimental pop with out ever letting it shatter. “Injury,” the opening observe off Paint a Room (his first new album in 5 years) places this dichotomy entrance and middle: As Cohen, dismayed, sings about how abuses of energy manifest in society, a summery mattress of horns courtesy of Jeff Parker envelops his dread in a pastoral calm. “Someone’s love was shot down once more,” he coos, simply moments earlier than a clean saxophone solo swirls into view.
Paint a Room is stuffed with some of these frozen-in-time vignettes, as Cohen’s intimate songwriting involves life in blossoming preparations seemingly plucked straight out of a classic California bachelor pad. Impressed by Uruguayan and Brazilian artists like Eduardo Mateo and Milton Nascimento, who pushed their people pop to proggy, boundless new locations within the ’70s and ’80s, Cohen traces his songs with flutes, congas, and Clavinets that instill a psychedelically tropical lilt. At occasions, the subtly fairly haze can threaten to dissipate into skinny air, however its highs reveal why Cohen stays one in every of indie rock’s most quietly wondrous songwriters.
Cohen’s melodies convey all the pieces his songs want fully on their very own (he usually plots out all his chords and phrasings nicely prematurely of determining what to really say). His hooks can really feel so easy and intuitive that it’s as in the event that they’ve all the time been there: The central piano motif in “Canine’s Face” materializes as gracefully as a mist unspooling over the Bay, earlier than a flippantly dissonant guitar riff begins to pulse like distant thunder. The ghostly keyboard riff in “Randy’s Chimes” creeps round as if it had been fixing a thriller, whereas “Bodily Handle” cruises on a playful bossa-nova groove that glides up and down like a child using an elevator. When Cohen does try and say one thing extra concrete along with his lyrics, his issues have a tendency towards trying to find hope within the modern-day. On the radiant “Sunever,” he speaks to a transgender youngster in regards to the future: “Up and up you climb, quickly you’ll depart us far behind,” he murmurs tenderly, promising them that “you’re gonna discover a method” and letting a joyous fiddle paint the trail.
