WATCH / SHARE “LANDERS (ALT VERSION)” HERE

ANNOUNCE SPRING/SUMMER UK + EU TOUR DATES

**PRE-SAVE DEEP IN VIEW DELUXE EDITION HERE**

"One of the year’s most thrilling rock statements." - Rolling Stone

"This pleasing mix of exploratory guitar tones and ever-shifting rhythms that switch between the kinetic and flowing makes for an arresting debut" - Uncut (8/10)

"Cola's debut album addresses modern anxieties wrought by technology in a world on the brink, bringing their imagistic worldview to the present...with sharper hooks and more succinct songwriting than the members’ past work.” - Pitchfork

“'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." - FADER

“Bobbing and weaving, its wiry, intricate guitar part pushes Tim Darcy's vocal into a different plane from his previous work.” - Clash (8/10)

Photo Credit : Colin Medley // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Last year, Cola, the new project from former Ought members Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy and US Girls/The Weather Station drummer Evan Cartwright, released their debut LP Deep In View on Next Door Records. Earning praise from outlets like Uncut (8/10), Loud and Quiet (8/10), Clash (8/10), NME Pitchfork, NPR, FADER, Stereogum and Rolling Stone who named the band an Artist You Need To Know and called their debut "one of the year’s most thrilling rock statements," the album was one of the year's most acclaimed debuts and launched the band on a year of touring in support of the release.

Today, almost exactly a year from the announce of the band's debut, Cola are back to announce an extensive run of dates in North America and Europe, and a new Deluxe Edition of their debut LP that will be out this Friday. The Deluxe Edition features a collection of instrumentals, demos and alternate versions of songs from the record, including a new version of “Landers” that the band are sharing today.

WATCH / SHARE “LANDERS (ALT VERSION)” HERE

MORE ABOUT DEEP IN VIEW
Deep in View is 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.

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.

PRE-SAVE DEEP IN VIEW DELUXE EDITION HERE

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COLA - DEEP IN VIEW DELUXE EDITION 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
11. Blank Curtain (Instrumental Demo)
12. So Excited (Instrumental Demo)
13. At Pace (Instrumental Demo)
14. Met Resistance (Instrumental Demo)
15. Degree (Instrumental Demo)
16. Gossamer (Instrumental Demo)
17. Mint (Instrumental Demo)
18. Fulton Park (Instrumental Demo)
19. Landers - Alt Version

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