Four years ago, The band Ought broke up. This was heart breaking for me personally, as someone who’s been obsessed with “Sun Coming Down” for years. But Cola, the trio Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy have been running with drummer Evan Cartwright since 2022, is a pretty damn good mollifier. It’s a somewhat different proposition than Ought—still post-punk, but tighter, sparer, rough edges a little smoothed down—and “Cost of Living Adjustment”, their third record, might be my favourite of theirs yet.
The album is technically self-titled: Cola, C-O-L-A, which the record’s full title turns into an acronym referring to the wage adjustments workers are nominally owed when inflation rises. As concepts go, it suits Darcy’s songwriting perfectly; he’s always had a political streak, but here it comes attached to a very of-the-moment kind of gallows humour that couldn’t fit him better.
The music is the loosest and noisiest Cola have sounded yet, more willing to let the seams show, but never losing that quality of feeling entirely deliberate—every choice made on purpose, every piece exactly where it belongs.
From Cola’s new album “Cost of Living Adjustment” out May 8th on Fire Talk
The Fat Angel Sings 