Cohen, Chris
Paint A Room
Cohen has never had as much to sing so directly as he does on Paint a Room, his first album in five years. If Cohen's meanings have previously lurked inside the tessellated musical layers he built alone, they are newly clear and resonant here, animated and underscored for the first time by a band playing in real time. There is the endless miasma of state violence on the subversively melodious opener 'Damage,' the existential exhaustion of modernity on the horn-traced jangle 'Laughing': this is Cohen communicating with friends not only through his deep understanding of groove, harmony, and hook but also with his listeners through songs that croon of our uneasy little era. On 'Paint A Room,' Cohen's music feels like a warm spring breeze, easy to love and gentle to feel. But it's often carrying something heavy, as if blowing in from some unseen storm cloud. Paint a Room both reckons with reality and conjures an alternate one, where nighttime walks and a neighbor's wind chimes offer endless escapes for the imagination, space for the mind to roam. Sublime and sun-lit, these 10 songs consider dreamy new ways out of old predicaments, clearly stating the problem and dancing and singing their way somewhere new.