Chris Cohen – Paint A Room

In 2008, I wore out Cryptacize’s CD Dig That Treasure, the theatrical jazz-pop album by Chris Cohen and Nedelle Torrisi, which featured the cheeky “Cosmic Sing-a-Long” video, featuring stop-motion footage of a cowbell. The two artists brought out the best in each other, whether it was their flattering voices that sound like an elementary school playground meets a cosmopolitan art gallery, or the art-rock guitars that adorn each track. Since then, his smooth, clear voice has been a homecoming of sorts for me, along with his uniquely jazzy compositions.

An introvert who found an outlet in music and practiced transcendental meditation from a young age, Chris Cohen had all the characteristics of a musician with ambitions to create a better world on debut album Cryptacize. Cohen’s latest record, Paint A Room, his fourth solo record and first with the Hardly Art label, has the same dynamic compositional DNA but is more grown-up, tackling some of the same universal questions with a more mature sound and poetry.

Whether it’s the opening track “Damage,” which deals with state violence and the “subtly pervasive habit of denying another’s personhood” (“Protect your property / but only life is precious”), or the title track, with its clever meditation on the similarities between housework and love (“Though we keep in touch / the paint dries on the brush”), Cohen digs deeper in each track to try to find language and sound for the complicated experience of being human in a chaotic, postmodern world.

“Randy’s Chimes” has taken the place of “Cosmic Sing-a-Long” this time around, and everything is much more personal and detailed. Although an artist traditionally builds their albums from the ground up, this record was also a much more collaborative effort, and was recorded after the songs had been on tour together as a band. Whether it’s the jangle pop of “Night or Day” or the jazzy dissonance of “Laughing,” Cohen and his team cover a lot of ground in terms of sound on the record.

A guitarist for indie rock outliers Deerhoof for a number of years and working as a producer with the likes of Weyes Blood, Kurt Vile and Cass McCombs, he’s a fixture on the American indie rock scene. And this album is a hearty addition that satisfies both on a superficial listen and when you delve deeper. His sophisticated jazz vocals, his piercing personal and social commentary make it an album that bears listening again and again. As he sings on the lilting “Physical Address” toward the end of the album, “Please explain it in your own words.” Chris Cohen has made an album that only he could have made, and we’re all the happier for it.

command Painting a room by Chris Cohen HERE