Cola - The Gloss Review
Cola continues to push the boundaries of their minimalist setup with an album packed full of new ideas and sounds.
The early 2010s saw the (loosely used term) post-punk scene ignited by bands that prodded, experimented and expanded the sounds expected from the genre. Preoccupations released sharp, paranoid shoegaze. The Men thrashed, picked up acoustic guitars, then thrashed again, while Protomartyr have continued to find new sounds in their no-nonsense punk / psych.
At the same time student protests in Quebec helped to forge Ought, a 4-piece art-punk outfit made up of Tim Darcy (vocals / guitar), Ben Stidworthy (bass), Tim Keen (drums) and Matt May (keyboards). Initially a scrappy, wiry pack that sounded like Mark E Smith having a panic attack in an avant-garde bookshop, they morphed into something altogether more muscular and glossy. By the time of their third and final album, gone were the yelps and elbows and in came croons and gospel choirs.
News of Ought’s split was softened by the announcement of Darcy and Stidworthy’s new project, Cola, in the same statement. Adding Evan Cartwright, the go to drummer for U.S. Girls and The Weather Station, Cola would pick up where Ought left off, not in sound but in their commitment to creative collaboration and change. Cola’s first album, Deep in View, was tightly packed with skeletal punk songs of isolation and disconnection, sung with a weary detachment.
Their second album, The Gloss, pushes Cola towards new boundaries once more, without casting off what came before. It retains the tight, interlocking minimalism captured on Deep in View and honed to perfection through a seemingly cerebral connection between the three members, and the swathes of live dates the band played in support of the record. Indeed, Cola barely had time to catch a breath from touring Deep in View before Darcy, Stidworthy and Cartwright were holed up in Montreal once more recording its successor.
Whereas on Deep in View Darcy’s guitar fell into a three line whip, rarely breaking with Stidworthy’s bass and Cartwright’s drums, on The Gloss it has greater prominence. Scraping, needling riffs imitate Darcy’s vocal hook on Tracing Hallmarks and Reprise, while simultaneously trying to fight it for centre stage as Darcy sings ““Skip the malnutrition/a sign of what you need/oh, better come back to it/basking and serene.” on the former.
Darcy takes inspiration from cinema and a one-night stand on Pallor Tricks and Albatross while his guitar acts like strokes of punctuation - full stops, exclamation points. Biting, gnarly riffs loosen into swinging choruses.
Darcy’s lyrics have often analysed heady themes - the banality of modern life, the joy in small things, isolation, ennui, through interrogation of the everyday - asking about the family, buying milk and dusting shelves. The Gloss continues that trend. On Keys Down if You Stay Darcy is a “fragrant shadow” as he describes lost, stuck feelings as “Wading out like a zero in the water/remainder too strained/ knee-deep and straight out” over ringing guitars and an off-kilter drum beat that came to Cartwright in a dream.
While his lyrics will gnaw and grow and warrant repeat listens, it is Darcy’s vocal delivery, and how it has continually evolved, that is immediately more striking. From the anxious, clipped too much coffee in the morning heart palpitation sprechgesang of Ought’s early albums to the glossy belting croon of his solo project and final Ought album to Deep in View’s detached delivery. On The Gloss he once again moulds his vocal chords into something new and with more emotion, more humour. Vowels are elongated and the clear enunciation feels less like you’re listening to Darcy sing than you are reading the sentences come directly from his mouth.
But this is not a solo album and Cartwright and Stidworthy provide equally vital contributions. Cartwright plays the intricate, feather-lite guitar on Nice Try, a gorgeous song that would not have sounded out of place on Pavement’s Twilight Terror. Stidworthy’s bass rumbles and bubbles and jabs throughout.
One of the album’s highpoints is Pulling Quotes, a song that sees Stidworthy and Cartwright’s lockstep dovetail joint rhythm remain as the perfect foil for Darcy’s searching, hanging chords, the tension eked out of them. But it’s the subtle, warm riff that spins the vice completely loose. A skimmed stone searching for its landing spot. A pebble dropped in a pool of water. The most sincere sounding song Cola has recorded, Darcy sings “Pulling quotes now in the dark/Our outlook is restrained/Your tongue might weaken to be-fit your smile/Til nothing ill remains.”
The album closes with Bitter Melon, the first song released from the record and the one most unlike anything else here. It starts with a jangling shimmering guitar, a poking bassline and a cajoling drum beat. Darcy is kept awake, studying the margins of the text he’s reading before a thick guitar lick bulldozes an entry like a sudden realisation. It may or may not point to a new direction the band could take. It underlines them as an endlessly exciting creative force.