WATCH / SHARE “SO EXCITED” HERE
BUY / STREAM “SO EXCITED” HERE
DEEP IN VIEW OUT MAY 20, 2022 VIA NEXT DOOR RECORDS
"A gorgeously obsessive guitar groove...'Blank Curtain' is more than just a beautiful tune — it’s a graceful way to mark the transition from one stage of life to the next." - Rolling Stone
“'Blank Curtain,' a song that seemingly alludes to the myriad of possibilities the band now faces, stacked with oblique imagery and tethered to a driving groove." - FADER
"A hypnotic debut outing, leveraging minimalist instrumentation into propulsive, droning post-punk." - Paste
Photo Credit: OK Pedersen: // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
In November, the Montreal band Ought announced their break up after three critically-acclaimed albums and 9 years together. This news came with a silver-lining though, as Ought members Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy simultaneously announced a new project with U.S. Girls/The Weather Station drummer Evan Cartwright called Cola. This coincided with the announcement of the new band's signing to Next Door Records and the release of their debut single "Blank Curtain" which generated immediate excitement, earning praise from outlets like Pitchfork, NPR, FADER, Stereogum, Uproxx, Paste, BrooklynVegan, Consequence, Clash, NME and Rolling Stone who described their sound as being "like a streamlined version of Ought" and highlighted the track's "gorgeously obsessive guitar groove."
Today, Cola are back to announce their debut LP Deep In View, which will be released via Next Door Records on May 20, 2022 and share its first single "So Excited". Built around Stidworthy's agile bass playing and Cartwright's insistent shuffle, "So Excited" conjures a sense of constant motion from minimal building blocks. Meditative but dynamically structured, it was the song around which the beginnings of this new project initially coalesced, as Darcy explains:
"We would talk about this track as the ‘capstone’ of the Cola record. It was that song that we would warm up with and get tight on since it was one of the first to really come together, plus it’s fun to play. There are Cola songs of mine that predate this one but this was the one I was working on when Ben told me he was going to come back from grad school and we talked about jamming together. It clicked when we played it out with Evan and from there we decided to work on songs for a new project.
The first song Tim showed me, I had this special bassline which I had been playing at Ought soundchecks and was saving for the right moment," Stidworthy adds. "It fit perfectly in the first phrase of the chorus and felt like it was a sign."
WATCH / SHARE “SO EXCITED” HERE
BUY / STREAM “SO EXCITED” HERE
MORE ABOUT DEEP IN VIEW
Deep In View is the debut album from former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) alongside Evan Cartwright (drums). Titled after philosopher Alan Watts’ anthology of the same name, the record is built on a foundation of elegant guitar grooves and knotty rhythms, offering commentary on modern life and technology through curious lyrical vignettes, where quotidian objects and scenes are never just as they seem. Deep In View is equally a product of introspective songwriting as it is a consideration of the abstract landmarks of an increasingly media-mediated society. It also presents the most concise and melodic songs Darcy and Stidworthy have written to date.
“I love when I find a record that has many different angles from which it can be approached,” Darcy explains. The band’s affinity for polysemy is first-and-foremost a chord struck in the name Cola, which most obviously is the fizzy beverage that Darcy deadpans is ”bound by laws older than man to poison most ordinary life on earth” in closing track “Landers”, but also can be traced back to a term in poetics as well as an acronym about social security that refers to “Cost of Living Adjustment”. Cola is also about drinking in the endless crispness of a streamlined (and streamed) world, and the often unsettling sense of satisfaction and emptiness that subsequently sets in. Fundamentally, this record is about passion and what happens to a person when they find themselves increasingly encountering a passionless landscape of consumption. This peeling back of layers is integral to both Cola’s mindset as well as their worldview, which despite a claustrophobic time in the making sees them joyfully exploring new realms as musicians.
Cola started collaborating in fall 2019 when Darcy and Stidworthy, both formerly of Ought, reached out to their friend Cartwright, who they had frequently met on the road while he was drumming with various other projects. “It wasn’t the post-Ought band right off the bat,” Darcy says, “we really just took time to enjoy the process of collaborating and writing songs together.” The band’s organic chemistry solidified quickly after a few sessions of jamming in-person. Then, as the pandemic began, they were forced to decamp and write songs separately. Working in solitude ended up becoming a “defining color as well as a barrier” to the album, says Darcy. He notes that he wrote the lyrics to “Fulton Park” as a “dream landscape”, a sort of alternative to the frustration and depression he was experiencing at the time.
LISTEN AND SHARE “BLANK CURTAIN” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BLANK CURTAIN” HERE
The imposed isolation of writing at home led Stidworthy (who helped compose the album’s guitar parts and plays the piano on “Landers”) to “create little worlds with the songs”. The keen brushstrokes of all three members combined feels languidly tactile, replete with profound meaning that is almost archeological in its sense of economy and personal touch. This sense of relaxed exploration could only occur because of the mutual trust between the trio: Stidworthy adds, “I could go really far in cultivating a mood for a demo and send it to them and know that it could only improve.” Meanwhile, Cartwright (who also plays guitar on the project and coded Supercollider synth parts in the studio), found that he was subliminally incorporating drum ideas and patterns from when he first started playing as a teen, embedded deep in his muscle memory.
The resulting record delights in its aversion to superficiality. Although Darcy’s characteristically wry voice remains front-and-center, shifting from decisive to distressed and detached, his lyrical invocations remain only the first key to a much more intricate universe of sound and longing. Individual tracks often feel like small revelations, and each element contributes to a streamlined and yet poetically expansive set of meanings, as the rhythms of the punchy and exuberant guitar parts, urgent basslines, and unexpected drum patterns all tangle with each other in an elegant dance. Much greater than the sum of its parts, Deep In View is an album of artful and energetic post-punk that sparks novel interpretations with every listen, like an object that takes on new shape with each angle from which you hold it.
DEEP IN VIEW TRACKLIST
1. Blank Curtain
2. So Excited
3. At Pace
4. Met Resistance
5. Degree
6. Water Table
7. Gossamer
8. Mint
9. Fulton Park
10. Landers
TOUR DATES
03.12 - Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
06.20 - Winooski, VT @ Monkey House
06.21 - Boston, MA @ Sonia's
06.22 - Kingston, NY @ Tubby's
06.23 - Brooklyn, NY @ Baby's All Right
06.24 - Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie
06.25 - Washington, DC @ DC9
06.27 - Raleigh, NC @ Cat's Cradle (Back Room)
06.28 - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
06.29 - Nashville, TN @ DRKMTTR
07.01 - Dallas, TX @ Ruins
07.02 - Austin, TX @ The Parish
07.05 - Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge
07.06 - San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar
07.07 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
07.08 - San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
07.10 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
07.11 - Vancouver, BC @ The Biltmore
07.12 - Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
07.14 - Boise, ID @ Neurolux
07.16 - Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
07.18 - Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
07.19 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry
07.20 - Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
07.21 - Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
07.22 - Detroit, MI @ Magic Bag
8.20 - Crickhowell, UK @ Green Man Festival
8.23 - Brighton, UK @ Prince Albert
8.24 - London, UK @ Moth Club
8.25 - Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
8.26 - Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade Bristol
8.27 - Birkenhead, UK @ Future Yard
8.28 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
8.30 - Edinburgh, UK @ Sneaky Pete's
8.31 - Glasgow, UK @ Broadcast
9.1 - Newcastle UK @ The Cluny 2
9.2 - Nottingham, UK @ Rough Trade
9.3 - Manchester, UK @ Manchester Psych Fest (Yes)
9.4 - Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival