Paint a Room is idiosyncratic, but it is an absolute joy. Accessible too. Permeated with a summery vibe, its 10 songs glisten like the surface of lake catching the setting sun’s rays. There’s a lightness, a buoyancy which instantly fascinates.
Chris Cohen has fashioned an album which is jazzy yet cleaves to a sensibility placing it as a distant cousin to Allah Las at their best or the wispier side of early Tame Impala. There are flutes, brass, sax, coconut shell-type persuasion, guitars treated to sound watery and Cohen’s lazy, just-verging on off-key voice. Swooning album opener “Damage” encapsulates it all in a little less than three minutes. After this, the musical equivalent of daydreaming while in a boat drifting across that figurative lake.
As to what has fed into this, nothing is overt. Some pointers though. There are hints of Jorge Ben, Milton Naschimento and Gary McFarland around the time of 1965’s In Sound album. A little more contemporaneously, “Wishing Well” is structurally similar – presumably coincidentally – to “Swimming Ground” from Meat Puppets’ 1985 Up on the Sun album. At odd moments, France's Tahiti 80 and Stereolab around the point of 1997’s Dots and Loops come to mind too.
This is the Los Angeles-based Cohen’s fourth solo album. His résumé is extensive. He was in angular art-rockers Deerhoof from 2003 to 2005. There were also albums with his own band The Curtains. Collaborations too, including with – relevant here in terms of how the implied musical touchstones are filtered – Ariel Pink. He has produced and played with Marina Allen, Amber Arcades, Weyes Blood and Cass McCombs. There has been session work for Kurt Vile. Cohen’s last album, a 2019 eponymous set, showcased a spacey pop a little like New Zealand’s Chills. Paint a Room, though, is way beyond this. “Close my eyes until it’s over,” sings Cohen on the title track. If taken positively, it’s good advice and the best way to appreciate this gem.
