Sharing a band name with a product like Cola, asks some interesting questions. Especially for one with such easily identified roots as Tim Darcy, Ben Stidworthy and drummer Evan Cartwright. Darcy and Stidworthy spent the past decade as members of Ought, the sprawling and poetic Montreal post-punk band whose new-wave indebted songs jutted in awkward yet appealing shapes across three studio albums before they called it quits in 2018. Cartwright, meanwhile, has played in bands including U.S. Girls and The Weather Station.
The trio formed Cola in 2019 and this week, May 20th, release debut album “Deep In View”. It’s an album filled with dystopian visions and the kind of paranoia that comes with spending your life doom scrolling 24/7. And yet, this bleak outlook is undercut by some of the strongest, and sweetest, melodic work across the members’ collective back catalogue. Spend a little time in Cola’s world and the name begins to sharpen into view: very few bands currently operating are able to capture the mass content era, specifically the way in which it leaves you feeling bloated but somehow empty, than they do.
“Ben and I had a flow writing this record where we would send each other demos every Friday,” explains Darcy. “It was a really motivating way to write, as I would spend the week working on something but then get the bonus of hearing what Ben had written when I sent him my track. I heard “Fulton Park” and was immediately excited to work on vocals for it. It’s such an interesting instrumental. These lush almost psychedelic guitars in the intro and chorus are paired with this really stripped down almost honky tonk verse. It conjured in my mind this kind of old west imagery. I suppose looking back on the lyrics now, that same kind of juxtaposition is present. Similar to Landers, it takes a look at the natural world and then the odd, magical, sometimes empty things that humans do on that landscape.”
In the run-up to the album release Cola are premiering album highlight “Fulton Park,” a twitchy pop nugget with a bouncing rhythm that gives way to Darcy’s surreal recollection of being “pulled over for imitating landscapes.” The song is brief but lush almost, Stidworthy’s almost psychedelic guitars rubbing up against a honky tonk-style verse. Speaking to The FADER, Darcy explained that the song “conjured in my mind this kind of old west imagery. I suppose looking back on the lyrics now, that same kind of juxtaposition is present. It takes a look at the natural world and then the odd, magical, sometimes empty things that humans do on that landscape.”
From Cola’s ‘Deep in View’ out May 20th on Fire Talk & Next Door Records.
2nd Sept – Nottingham, UK @ Rough Trade
The Fat Angel Sings 