- What’s the boldest solution to the challenge of the sophomore record and the associated, dreaded slump? Go straight ahead, change nothing, two-fingers to you, one bird for each of you, critics and listeners!
While you’re sucking down that assault to your self-esteem, let’s focus on the fact that this isn’t actually Cohen’s second record, by herself or otherwise. Putting aside her work with Furrs, Gabriella Cohen emerged from the primordial, lo-fi soup of her own back catalogue with Full Closure, No Details, two years back. It was a record so startlingly accomplished, diverse and finely detailed, it might as well have been the work of a completely different artist from the one who had put out everything before.
There’s just a whole lot of things worth celebrating about that record. It worked in an endless cavalcade of styles: from blues rock, to gothic country, to soul, to r’n’b, to prog and even big pop singles for the radio. Everything it decided to do it did with perfect ease and, better, despite being quite experimental whenever it chose, it made for a whole that was deeply listenable, for a large number of people. When you discovered that the layered and veteran sounding production was the work of Cohen and co-conspirator Kate Dillon, in a shed out in the bush, with … one microphone? It’s almost implausible.
Confronted with the actuality, no-one hesitated to believe and many plaudits followed: signings, tours, and glamorous supports. In the midst of all of that, including an extensive world tour, it would have been easy to imagine Gabriella Cohen dining out on the buzz for a substantial period. You could wait up to four years for another full-length. You might put out another EP to remind people you’re alive, I suppose.
Instead, the skeleton of a new record has been dragged along on tour, across the world, and with no more studio pizzazz than the last and, certainly, with a lot more going on in the background, here it is. A follow-up for which there’s bound to be a lot of attention, thrust into the harsh spotlight of the industry - what could go wrong?
The first couple of lazy, laidback singles, Music Machine and Baby seemed pleasant enough, but their blase retro-pop lacked the big-single-bite of Full Closure’s most in-your-face tune, Alien Anthem. It made me wonder if the new record would really have the energy to recreate all that Gabriella Cohen buzz. Context is king, however and rubbing shoulders with the rest of the tunes on Pink Is The Colour Of Unconditional Love, the singles seem much more at home. Here, what they lack in pure punch is more than made up for by the colourful diversity of what’s on offer.
Very much as they did on the last record, Gabriella and Kate have clearly had a fine time taking a gander at pop history and saying “I bet we could do that too!” Music Machine offers a pop drawl that could have been composed any time since the early ‘60s and Baby, well, that’s something quite similar except that it’s sandwiched together with an easy-going reggae skank. From there the record goes into a slow roll through a kaleidoscope of transformations. I Feel So Lonely puts the lie to its melancholy lyrics: a wry smile shines through the happy, close-harmony bounce that is equal parts The Beatles and Beach Boys. Miserable Baby sounds similarly tongue-in-cheek and very much like a doo-wop spin on the classic Tide Is High (you may recall the Blondie version?). The seething blues rock of Mercy almost means the heartache it exudes and is the very blueprint of the smouldering sound of The Doors.
Amidst the thousand-and-one-styles-to-imitate-before-you-die it’s interesting to notice what actually ties the record together. For all of the lyrical preoccupation with heartbreak and isolation in exotic climes like LA and Portugal, there’s an undercurrent of subversive pleasure: like all the melancholy is just a cool pose and really she and Kate are having the time of their lives jamming out what they please. I mean, really, they’d be noodling it out in their lounge room anyway, but instead they’re getting paid to trip around the world; they can barely conceal their grins!
The changes keep on rolling out and you can hear that Pink is often quite self-indulgent and, despite the obvious skill, a lot of the little touches are quite tentative and experimental, like they’ve just thrown together whatever to see if it would hang together. Take for instance the endless moods of Change which climax in an epic Cream rock sunburst or the aimless country blues mosey of Neil Young Goes Crazy, which was just too moreish for anyone to wind the song up. I guess Cohen and Dillon are simply two of the blessed few who can sling all of their crazy experimentations in songcraft out there and for it to come out sounding like one of 2018’s most engaging records.
In this way Pink Is The Colour Of Unconditional Love repeats much of the formula that made Full Closure great. Its many colours are self-indulgent, just going exactly where it’s creators feel like. It’s almost certainly not a gameplan anyone but Gabriella Cohen can adopt and as she calmly makes lightning strike twice, if there’s one way she repeats herself more than any other, it’s the ease with which she does it all.
- Chris Cobcroft.