Paint a Room is LA artist Chris Cohen’s first album in five years, a 10-track record that sees him up the jazz credentials. Chris is probably best known for his stint with indie outfit Deerhoof; there’s also his art-rock act The Curtains, preceding production and session work for the likes of Weyes Blood, Kurt Vile, Le Ren, and Marina Allen.
The album is out on July 12th, his first with Hardly Art. The first single out now, Damage, is full of promise with its beautifully crafted jazz arrangements, overlaid with seemingly sunny, seductive vocals. Yet if you dig deeper, there’s more going on in this ‘protest song’ with its lyrics about institutions and the negativity they foster. As Cohen says, it’s “my version of an abolitionist pop song.”
Chris enlisted help from longtime touring bandmates Davin Givhan (bass), Josh da Costa (drums), and Jay Israelson (keyboards), he built demos in a dusty garage of a suburban Altadena, California, rental and took the songs on tour with that crew, yielding total control by letting them fill in or flourish their own parts as they saw fit. Cohen called in a few friends to help – multi-instrumentalist and composer Jeff Parker contributes the fluttering horn arrangement on “Damage”. Paint a Room was produced and engineered by Chris Cohen, mixed by Kenny Gilmore (Weyes Blood), and mastered by Mike Nolte at Eureka Mastering.
Talking about Damage, Chris shares: “Trying to make something beautiful as a way to think through a problem, I wrote this song to consider the many forms state violence takes and the subtly pervasive habit of denying someone else’s personhood. We’re told that police, prisons, and the military are necessary to ensure peace, but like many people, I’ve come to see that it’s actually the opposite. I definitely struggled to find what I thought were the right words, to say something that might be hard for some of us to hear. This is my best attempt for now – my version of an abolitionist pop song.”
Paint a Room is now available to preorder on CD/LP/DSPs from Hardly Art. LP preorders from the Hardly Art Minimart, Mega Mart 2 (the new, UK-based sibling site to the world-famous Sub Pop Mega Mart), and select independent retailers in North America and the UK/EU will receive the album on Red vinyl.