The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. We’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
Cola’s sort-of self-titled album proves the sustaining and sustained power of the punk and post-punk canon.
Cost of Living Adjustment is the third LP from the Montreal trio, who rose from the ashes of the much-admired band Ought.1 It was clearly made by and for people who have heard, digested and been fortified by the pantheon of cool kid essentials that keep every “Best Albums of All-Time” list from being just an exercise in re-ranking the same few dozen albums by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Prince, the Rolling Stones, and Pet Sounds.
Cola’s latest bears the genetic markers of Television, the Modern Lovers, the Cure, the Smiths, the Talking Heads, Wire, Killing Joke and the myriad bands who have revived, remixed or ripped off elements from those luminaries.2 Cost of Living Adjustment is an album packed with lead vocalist Tim Darcy’s droll-but-not-dispassionate observations about how the world works and abstract imagery, backed by a blend of Ben Stidworthy’s sonorous, impellent bass, Evan Cartwright’s lively drums, and Darcy’s chiming guitar, all kept firmly tethered to earth by a spacious, artfully muddy mix.
It’s that last feature that helps set Cost of Living Adjustment apart from Cola’s contemporaries and the band’s previous LPs. Deep in View, Cola’s 2022 debut, is similarly scruffy, but it’s also quiet to the point of sounding muffled. The Gloss, released in 2024 and suitably named, stands as the cleanest and clearest album in Cola’s discography. The darker, hazier, stretched-and-compressed tinge doesn’t radically change Cola’s music, but it is noticeably different.
There is a sometimes sibilant murkiness throughout the album that practically radiates the same musk as a box of secondhand records, and it is made more interesting by bucking the usual pattern of a band cleaning up its sound over time. It’s a change that came from within, too. While Valentin Ignat, who recorded the first two Cola albums, engineered and mixed COLA, this time around, the band is credited with arrangement and production.3
It’s a direction that serves the songs well, creating a sense of heft through texture and further solidifying an out-of-time feeling, like small, dark rooms granted additional dimension by flickering candlelight. That extra pinch of personality is especially welcome because while COLA is devoid of bad songs, none of its tracks stand out as truly exceptional either. The lows are incredibly high, and the highs are pretty good.
There are enough interesting lyrics and musical flourishes scattered throughout COLA’s runtime to keep the album interesting. “We’re like two birds of paradise/ Locked out of our home/ And what is that home? Well, it is paradise, baby,” from “Polished Knives” sets a high-water mark for humor, while “You said it best, you cannot best a wave/ It either crests or passes by,” is a lovely bit of serenity within “Much of Muchness,” possibly the most straightforward post-punk song on the album — although there isn’t a ton of competition for that post.
Many of COLA‘s songs include a twist or stylistic tweak not found elsewhere on the album. “Conflagration Mindset” is an ultra-woozy song that should soundtrack the slow-motion punches people throw in their dreams. “Hedgesitting” uses drums and a sample loop to explore dreamy, dance-y terrain.4 “Fainting Spells” starts with frail plucking reminiscent of a wind-up music box, finding stability and substance when bass enters the picture. “Haveluck Country” begins as the album’s most driving song with bursts of guitar and thudding drums trading punches. A spindly bassline manages to get in between the combatants, pushing the pace harder and threatening to send the song into a higher gear. However, the kinetic potential fizzles, and the tightly wound song unravels into loose strands of echoing, delay-drenched guitar. When Darcy practically sighs, “Oh, it’s painfully serene/ Crime without a payoff,” he could be describing the current song.
Similarly, “Conflagration Mindset” never becomes the kind of serrated noise or sludgy, narcotized soundscape it could become, “Fainting Spells” brings back its plinking opening near the end of the song to do more of the same, and “Hedgesitting” never quite achieves the blissed-out party mode embodied by the best Madchester songs. Cola has good ideas, but they rarely reach a cathartic conclusion.
“Favoured to Ride,” COLA‘s penultimate track, is the exception. Darcy delivers his most forceful, emotive vocals over ringing, jangly chords. It’s legitimately stirring and gets a forward push from Stidworthy and Cartwright’s tight work. Bright, bubbling keys courtesy of Cartwright rise in the mix and add speckles of lightness. Intensity, volume and tempo all increase, and Darcy sings the song’s title four times over what sounds like a calliope-assisted breakdown. It’s handily the most triumphant moment on the LP, and Cola deploys it again in the back half of the song to set up a sweet guitar-key fadeout.
A few more go-for-broke moments like that would go a long way toward elevating an admirable, quite good post-punk album, but the base model delivered is well worth spending time with.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
The Kids In The Hall, Season Five, Episode Eighteen
“I’ve never really discussed anything personal with you, have I, Dan?”
“Uh, no, but that’s okay, I’ve never really considered myself a, uh, person.”
“Brown stuff has started coming out of my mouth.”
“Dan, I’m over here now.”
“Brown stuff is not a symbol! It’s brown stuff! And it’s coming out of my mouth!”
“Why don’t you just keep me company somewhere else?”
“You mind if I keep some of that brown stuff in a cup? I think my wife may get a big kick out of it.”
The “How We Look To Others” sketch feels like quintessential KITH, with a boring guy who obsesses over getting something incredibly minor correct in a way that only matters to him. This is why I read and have wide interests, to give my brain somewhere to go and information to play with. Also why I devote myself to art.
“Do you want to do loud sex?”
“Sure, we can practice that one.”
“Well, I heard it was created by Liz Taylor to give her name a boost.”
“How can you talk that way about Liz Taylor after all she has done for the gay community?”
“What would you do if there was a cure tomorrow?”
“I’d probably get really wrecked and then I’d go out and do a bunch of guys.”
“So you wouldn’t do anything differently?”
“No.”
There’s no real laugh-out-loud line, but I enjoyed Stan leaving the office. It’s like a complete reverse of the tone and aesthetic of “Like A Boss” to get to the same place.
“Father, may I break the silence?”
“Impetuous youth! You already have!”
“I made a very fine trout gravy this year, son!”
“No, we bury people standing up because we’ve run out of room.”
Fun for me to try to guess what sketches these are just from the dialogue (I’m guessing we got Steps and Darill?).
Elementary, “Solve for X” – This was one of my favorite episodes when it first aired, though on rewatch it doesn’t quite hold together. The mystery involves the murder of two mathematicians working on P = NP (for some reason given as P vs NP), a real life unsolvable equation that has a real world offer of $1 million to solve it. The plot posits that solving this would have real world computational consequences, and thus the killer is about to hack into a surveillance camera and change the time. Except…I think a hacker can do that without a magic key, and most experts say P = NP has no actual uses. Still, this is fun for a while and I like when the writers use something real and obscure and interesting. Lynn Collins plays the killer. But there is also a subplot where we learn the details of the accident that ended Watson’s medical career, and where we meet the son of the man she killed (Jeremy Jordan). Who wants a loan from her. This part is very well handled and shows the bond that has formed between Holmes and Watson. Some great use of on location shoots, especially at a Queens cemetery.
The Twilight Zone, “One for the Angels” – Works really well as long as you don’t look at it too closely. More later in the week.
Frasier, “No Sex, We’re Skittish” – So Roz decides after not even a day she hates her new job and comes back to KACL again and pretends nothing happens. And Frasier is convinced Roz is love with him, and that he should think twice about having sex with julia since, er, he has that effect on women? Meanwhile, Niles tries to track down a sperm sample he gave in college and learns it was discarded due to low motility, and starts to do everything he can to increase the odds, but fret not, Daphne is pregnant anyway. This one is a total mess. I think the writers simply had no idea what to do with Roz changing jobs, but now she looks terrible, going back and forth between the jobs in a matter of days. Frasier is nearly insufferable. And I suspect they had no plan for where Julia would end up. The Niles plot is at least cute.
I have a couple notes in the “One for the Angels” write-up about certain bits not really making logical sense but working for the parable/folklore-like setup; establishing the level of reality in a lot of these episodes goes a long way.
Columbo, “Dead Weight”
Suzanne Pleshette is the highlight here as a woman who’s out with her awful mother on a rented boat when she witnesses a murder through the window of a seaside mansion: Eddie Albert’s retired Major Hollister has shot his embezzling accomplice before the man can run away from a coming inquiry (let alone be caught). At first, Pleshette defiantly holds on to her initial impression of the crime, despite skepticism from everyone else, but she weakens as Hollister lays on the charm and the faux-casual dismantling of her certainty. It puts her in an unenviable position: when Columbo inevitably traps Hollister, she doesn’t even get to feel vindicated. Instead, she feels more foolish than ever–and a bit broken-hearted, too. It’s an affecting performance and arc, even if I wish the mystery aspect to this episode were stronger.
The internet tells me that Falk more or less went on strike while this one was filmed, angry that the studio was reneging on a promise to let him direct. His protests didn’t really work since he would only be in the chair twice (and one of those times unofficially), but if thing seem out of sorts, that’s why.
This is Eddie Albert after years of Green Acres, looking to move back to drama, and Suzanne Pleshette after years of TV appearances but a full year from her breakthrough with Bob Newhart.
Kacey Musgraves – Middle of Nowhere
My favorite country artists tend to be fiery belters, and that’s not Musgraves style. Her latest is a smooth pop-country fusion in the mode of her wildly successful Golden Hour.
I really liked this album’s tempo-changing title track; the Miranda Lambert-featuring, beef-quashing “Horses and Divorced”; and had a love-hate feelings about “Dry Spell” and “Mexico Honey.” Both songs are sometimes-clever, sometimes clunky expressions of libido. “Mexico Honey” features a half-rapped line about Daft Punk and “Dry Spell” thrusts “Ain’t nobody’s tool up in my shed,” upon the world. Still, I mostly like both songs and think a willingness to blend silly and sensual is a brave, cool move.
I gave this album three stars on Letterboxd-for-music site, record.club.
Wor$t Girl in America – Slayyter
I loved this blend of sleazy electroclash, industrial impulses and pop hooks. This is another album that expresses desire with humor, although it’s considerably raunchier than anything Musgraves has put on wax.
The first four songs from this album and a few late-LP cuts are now on my running playlist.
For me, the album highlight is the ultra-catchy, “Beat Up Chanel$,” but there are a half dozen tracks nearly as strong.
I gave this four stars over on record.club.
1000 Rabbits – Are We Friends Yet?
If I wasn’t trying to cover fewer EPs for the Sounding Board, this would have been my pick for the week.
It’s a jazzy bit of indie art-rock from a young five-piece — guitar, bass, drums, synthesizer and violin — that suggests a bright future ahead.
As with most things, I wish it rocked a little harder or really swung for the weird art-rock fences, but I quite liked it, and gave it three and a half stars on record.club.
I assume this would let me indulge my massive crush on Suzanne Pleshette?
Of course. And there’s always The Shaggy DA and Blackbeard’s Ghost.
I think I saw the latter but only dim memories.
It holds up pretty well, thanks to Ustinov’s improvising.
“Did you ever – pat a dog?”
“A dog? Pat it? No, I never did pat it.”
Love Blackbeard’s Ghost.
It would, despite the vaguely mullet-like look she has going on here. And good taste!
I saw this last night too, and agree that the perspective of a witness was more interesting than that of the crime and detective work. This is a rather unique episode for that, as I recall.
Small Crimes – I think I had this on my Netflix watchlist years ago when I used to pay for Netflix myself, it jumped out as a solid 90-minute not-too-taxing option last night as I browsed and I figured I’d finally give it a go. I had forgotten that it was from the same director as Cheap Thrills, which I really liked, and maybe that film’s solid writing is why this one has a vastly overqualified cast? That’s the main draw here, the rest of it I found pretty underwhelming… some clunky writing and a protagonist who is unpleasant but not in a very interesting way. It has some small-town crime charm and the cast elevate it a fair bit (what are you doing here, Robert Forster and Jackie Weaver?) but I should probably have let it rot on that forgotten watchlist from the before times.
What did we listen to?
1001 Albums, etc.
Talk Talk – The Colour of Spring: another of those artists I feel like I SHOULD like, but they never really grab me. There are some cool unusual arrangements here but I guess I don’t love the vocals.
Megadeth – Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?: I enjoyed this more than Metallica, but that’s not saying much. Thrash metal is just NOT my genre.
Bon Jovi – Slippery When Wet: I have a little nostalgic fondness for the big singles and I guess this era of Bon Jovi is more agreeable than the sappy rock ballads they’d churn out later, but still… no thanks.
Sonic Youth – EVOL: hell yeah! Not one of my top-tier SY albums but it’s nestled nicely in the pack of killer ones just behind. “Expressway to Yr Skull” is a classic, some of the other tracks feel like a stepping stone to better stuff on the way, but either way a pleasure to revisit.
Slayer – Reign in Blood: see entry for Megadeth. Gotta admire the sheer speed here though, and it was over in less than 30 minutes which I respect.
Throwing Muses – Throwing Muses: never really dug into these before, was confused by there being TWO albums called Throwing Muses, what is this Weezer-level bullshit? Enjoyed this once I’d found the right one though, a bit darker and post-punkier than I expected.
Paul Simon – Graceland: a Problematic Fave, even before all the apartheid / boycott stuff there’s the shit about him stealing the entire concept from an artist he’d been hired to produce, yeesh. But I can’t deny that the music is pretty great, and holds up well even if there’s some tricky stuff to think about here.
—
Blank Check, Dead Poet’s Society – haven’t managed to fill in any of my Weird blind-spots so this was my first episode in a while. I didn’t see the film until relatively recently and I also enjoyed it with disclaimers so thought this was an interesting chat. Nia DaCosta has pretty much won me back over now after that brutal episode on The Fog, she’s a good guest when she has stuff to say.
ANGEL, OF, DEATHHHHHH! Aw, I might have to listen to this along with Cola today.
I feel the same way with Talk Talk, nothing against them but the post-rock movement never grabbed me.
I like a lot of the Slint-derived post-rock stuff but yeah I guess I’m pretty cold on the Talk Talk end of the spectrum.
Robert Smigel is on Stavvy’s World so getting not just Triumph roasting Stav to his delight (“You look like a baby that’s been rolled around the barbershop floor”) but also two comedy geeks riffing and talking about Smigel’s history on SNL and Conan. In other podcasts, Weird Studies had a fantastic episode discussing Kenneth Batcheldor, a psychologist whose experiments in the paranormal and insights are really cool and stimulating.
Music-wise, I’ve been listening to Colin Stetson, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and the Crash (the good one) soundtrack while writing, so any suggestions for creepy/horror-like compositions and music would be great.
If you haven’t listened to John Carpenter’s Lost Themes, those could be a good fit.
“You became famous from Cum Town, and I’m not talking about your beard”
Finally found the time for one of the Peter Weir Blank Checks,. on Dead Poets Society. It was generally okay, but I didn’t feel like I gained many insights into the movie. The asides were more interesting.
Gonna have to listen today as a big Ought fan. “Desire” is one of my favorites of the 2010’s and one I’d love to do in some indie karaoke night.
Year of the Month update!
This May, we’ll be opening the doors for your writing on any movies, albums, books, etc. from 2014!
TBD: Cori Domschot: Earth to Echo
TBD: Cori Domschot: Jack Ryan
May. 17th: Tristan Nankervis: Whiplash
May 23rd: Ben Hohenstatt: Plowing Into the Field of Love
May 31st: Tristan Nankervis: The Imitation Game
And in. June, you can write up any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1958.
Jun. 5th: Gillian Nelson: Paul Bunyan
Jun. 12th: Gillian Nelson: Grand Canyon
Jun. 14th: Tristan Nankervis: Vertigo
Jun. 19th: Gillian Nelson: Elfego Banca
Jun. 26th: Gillian Nelson: Disneyland Gay Days
Jun. 28th: Tristan Nankervis: Touch of Evil