WATCH / SHARE “WATER TABLE” HERE
BUY / STREAM “WATER TABLE” HERE
DEEP IN VIEW OUT MAY 20, 2022 VIA NEXT DOOR RECORDS
PRE-ORDER DEEP IN VIEW HERE
"A gorgeously obsessive guitar groove...'Blank Curtain' is more than just a beautiful tune — it’s a graceful way to mark the transition from one stage of life to the next." - Rolling Stone
“'Blank Curtain,' a song that seemingly alludes to the myriad of possibilities the band now faces, stacked with oblique imagery and tethered to a driving groove." - FADER
"A hypnotic debut outing, leveraging minimalist instrumentation into propulsive, droning post-punk." - Paste
Photo Credit : Colin Medley // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
In February, Cola, the new project from former Ought members Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy and US Girls/The Weather Station drummer Evan Cartwright, announced their debut LP. Entitled Deep In View, the album is due out May 20 on Next Door Records and has generated a great deal of excitement already, earning praise from outlets like Pitchfork, NPR, FADER, Stereogum, Uproxx, Paste, BrooklynVegan, Consequence, Clash, and NME.
Today, the band have given their first interview as a band, speaking to Rolling Stone about their new LP in an Artist You Need To Know feature, and are sharing a new single from the LP, a track called "Water Table".
"Water Table” came from “some experiments with bass chords," Stidworthy explains. "The guitar parts of the verse was an attempt to write something Tim would come up with and basically wrote itself. The guitar in the chorus was originally a harp sample played on a keyboard, which is why the working title was Dark Harp. It was the last song I wrote for the record at a moment when we were pretty sure what would end up on the record. I felt like the record needed the emotional note of a song like Water Table and the track flowed out of me. Tim sent it back to me with lyrics the next day so I knew it was gonna work."
WATCH / SHARE “WATER TABLE” HERE
BUY / STREAM “WATER TABLE” HERE
MORE ABOUT DEEP IN VIEW
Deep in View is the debut album from former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) alongside Evan Cartwright (drums). Titled after philosopher Alan Watts’ anthology of the same name, the record is built on a foundation of elegant guitar grooves and knotty rhythms, offering commentary on modern life and technology through curious lyrical vignettes, where quotidian objects and scenes are never just as they seem. Deep In View is equally a product of introspective songwriting as it is a consideration of the abstract landmarks of an increasingly media-mediated society. It also presents the most concise and melodic songs Darcy and Stidworthy have written to date.
“I love when I find a record that has many different angles from which it can be approached,” Darcy explains. The band’s affinity for polysemy is first-and-foremost a chord struck in the name Cola, which most obviously is the fizzy beverage that Darcy deadpans is ”bound by laws older than man to poison most ordinary life on earth” in closing track “Landers”, but also can be traced back to a term in poetics as well as an acronym about social security that refers to “Cost of Living Adjustment”. Cola is also about drinking in the endless crispness of a streamlined (and streamed) world, and the often unsettling sense of satisfaction and emptiness that subsequently sets in. Fundamentally, this record is about passion and what happens to a person when they find themselves increasingly encountering a passionless landscape of consumption. This peeling back of layers is integral to both Cola’s mindset as well as their worldview, which despite a claustrophobic time in the making sees them joyfully exploring new realms as musicians.
Cola started collaborating in fall 2019 when Darcy and Stidworthy, both formerly of Ought, reached out to their friend Cartwright, who they had frequently met on the road while he was drumming with various other projects. “It wasn’t the post-Ought band right off the bat,” Darcy says, “we really just took time to enjoy the process of collaborating and writing songs together.” The band’s organic chemistry solidified quickly after a few sessions of jamming in-person. Then, as the pandemic began, they were forced to decamp and write songs separately. Working in solitude ended up becoming a “defining color as well as a barrier” to the album, says Darcy. He notes that he wrote the lyrics to “Fulton Park” as a “dream landscape”, a sort of alternative to the frustration and depression he was experiencing at the time.
WATCH / SHARE “SO EXCITED” HERE
BUY / STREAM “SO EXCITED” HERE
The imposed isolation of writing at home led Stidworthy (who helped compose the album’s guitar parts and plays the piano on “Landers”) to “create little worlds with the songs”. The keen brushstrokes of all three members combined feels languidly tactile, replete with profound meaning that is almost archeological in its sense of economy and personal touch. This sense of relaxed exploration could only occur because of the mutual trust between the trio: Stidworthy adds, “I could go really far in cultivating a mood for a demo and send it to them and know that it could only improve.” Meanwhile, Cartwright (who also plays guitar on the project and coded Supercollider synth parts in the studio), found that he was subliminally incorporating drum ideas and patterns from when he first started playing as a teen, embedded deep in his muscle memory.
The resulting record delights in its aversion to superficiality. Although Darcy’s characteristically wry voice remains front-and-center, shifting from decisive to distressed and detached, his lyrical invocations remain only the first key to a much more intricate universe of sound and longing. Individual tracks often feel like small revelations, and each element contributes to a streamlined and yet poetically expansive set of meanings, as the rhythms of the punchy and exuberant guitar parts, urgent basslines, and unexpected drum patterns all tangle with each other in an elegant dance. Much greater than the sum of its parts, Deep in View is an album of artful and energetic post-punk that sparks novel interpretations with every listen, like an object that takes on new shape with each angle from which you hold it.
LISTEN AND SHARE “BLANK CURTAIN” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BLANK CURTAIN” HERE
DEEP IN VIEW TRACKLIST
1. Blank Curtain
2. So Excited
3. At Pace
4. Met Resistance
5. Degree
6. Water Table
7. Gossamer
8. Mint
9. Fulton Park
10. Landers
TOUR DATES
06.20 - Winooski, VT @ Monkey House
06.21 - Boston, MA @ Sonia's
06.22 - Kingston, NY @ Tubby's
06.23 - Brooklyn, NY @ Baby's All Right
06.24 - Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie
06.25 - Washington, DC @ DC9
06.27 - Carrboro, NC @ Cat's Cradle (Back Room)
06.28 - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
06.29 - Nashville, TN @ DRKMTTR
07.01 - Dallas, TX @ Ruins
07.02 - Austin, TX @ The Parish
07.05 - Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge
07.06 - San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar
07.07 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
07.08 - San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
07.10 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
07.11 - Vancouver, BC @ The Biltmore
07.12 - Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
07.14 - Boise, ID @ Neurolux
07.16 - Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
07.18 - Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
07.19 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry
07.20 - Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
07.22 - Detroit, MI @ Magic Bag
08.20 - Crickhowell, UK @ Green Man Festival
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8.23 - Brighton, UK @ Prince Albert
08.24 - London, UK @ Moth Club
08.25 - Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
08.26 - Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade Bristol
08.27 - Birkenhead, UK @ Future Yard
08.28 - Sunderland, UK @ Pop Recs Ltd.
08.30 - Edinburgh, UK @ Sneaky Pete's
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8.31 - Glasgow, UK @ Broadcast
09.1 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
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9.2 - Nottingham, UK @ Rough Trade
09.3 - Manchester, UK @ Manchester Psych Fest (Yes)
09.4 - Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival