Chris Cohen Brighton

Chris Cohen live in Brighton at Green Door Store on 1st August! Get tickets above, or from SeeTickets.

Chris Cohen was always a quiet kid. In fact, this introversion was one reason he began playing music as a toddler—to communicate without speaking to identify with others without the direct representation of words. It has worked, too, with Cohen’s terrific stint in the mighty Deerhoof and his own captivating art-rock act The Curtains, preceding production and session work for the likes of Weyes Blood, Kurt Vile, Le Ren, and Marina Allen. Somewhere along that long way, Cohen started writing lyrics. He found that, though it didn’t come naturally, the process offered a new sense of self-discovery and reckoning, a way to see himself and the world from unexpected angles. His three twilit albums of casually complicated pop during the last decade radiated these epiphanies: handling family strife, navigating advancing age, and understanding social woes.

But Cohen has never had as much to sing so directly as he does on Paint a Room, his first album in five years and his debut for Hardly Art. 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.

Cohen even called in a few friends to help, with Jeff Parker contributing the fluttering horn arrangement on “Damage,” and Parker collaborator Josh Johnson (who produced Meshell Ndegeocello’s Grammy-Award-winning album The Omnichord Real Book) supplying flute, sax, and clarinet arrangements throughout the record. It felt a little bit like producing someone else’s records, with Cohen given the chance to step back and evaluate others’ contributions to his own songs rather than scrutinize every little bit he made himself. This was a longtime ambition realized, another way of relating to others openly through sound.

Cohen, really, has never sounded so assured on a solo album, gliding above or sinking into this band that boasts a preternatural sense of feel. On “Damage,” as he surveys the way we lord power over people with less of it in most every walk of life, his voice lifts above Johnson’s horns like he’s looking for a way out. Cohen wrote “Sunever” for a transgender child in his life, while considering the violence that hard-and-fast categories can create. This song reminds us that we are “always in between,” that transitions are just a part of life. With the hook, he sweetly sings his vow: “You’re gonna find a way.” Cohen is tender and vulnerable in the lead, his voice cracking with feeling as the tune presses forward toward a better future. Written by cutting and pasting phrases from the unemployment form he filled out at the pandemic’s start, the frolicking “Physical Address” considers what it is we all want for our lives, how we untether ourselves from the past in the present. 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.

https://chriscohen.bandcamp.com

+ The Cindys: Bristolian outfit The Cindys united through a shared love of Alex Chilton, The Clean and The Feelies. Birth child of Jack Ogborne (aka Bingo Fury) and with help from Naima Bock, Finlay Burrows and members of Belishas, the group fronts surrealist imagery and infectious hooks at a pace that’ll give you butterflies. Their yet to be released debut album was recorded across the west country, between the vault of the Cornish Bank in Falmouth, Rockfield studios in Wales and the cellar of legendary venue The Louisiana in Bristol throughout 2024. The album includes production and engineering contributions from Joe Jones (Aldous Harding, The Cure, Teenage Fanclub) and Sam Stackpool of Holiday Ghosts, who also features on guitar. The album can be expected later this year.

Upcoming Love Thy Neighbour shows:
04062025 – Van Zon + Glasshouse Red Spider Mite. Alphabet
05062025 – Steve Conte. The Prince Albert
06062025 – Willi Carlisle. Alphabet
13062025 – Eva Lunny. The Rose Hill
13062025 – Lower Slaughter. The Hope & Ruin
13062025 – Niamh Regan. Folklore
08072025 – Battlesnake + DZ Deathrays. Chalk
11072025 – Cheekface + Martha. Chalk
01082025 – Chris Cohen. Green Door Store
27082025 – The Burning Hell. Komedia
01092025 – Ducks Ltd. Dust
06092025 – Throwing Muses. Chalk
19092025 – Nic Cage Against The Machine. Patterns
19092025 – Bridhde Chaimbeul. Komedia
20092025 – Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan. Dust
27092025 – The Beths, Chalk
28092025 – Chris Wood. Lewes Con Club
30092025 – The Wants. Green Door Store
08102025 – Martha Tilston. Komedia
11102025 – Jah Wobble & The Invaders of the Heart. Lewes Con Club
12102025 – Martin Carthy. Lewes Con Club
13102025 – Welly. Chalk
17102025 – The Utopia Strong. Hope & Ruin
26102025 – The Lovely Eggs. Brighton
29102025 – Mumble Tide. The Prince Albert
31102025 – Lack of Afro. Patterns
05112025 – CIEL. Patterns
09112025 – Lonnie Holley. Lewes Constitutional Club
13112025 – The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Concorde 2
14112025 – Mik Artistik’s Ego Trip. Lewes Constitutional Club
15112025 – Stick in the Wheel. Lewes Constitutional Club
15112025 – Niall McNamee. Alphabet
28112025 – Ozric Tentacles + System 7. Concorde 2
06122025 – Chainska Brassika. Alphabet
13122025 – John Otway & his band. Lewes Constitutional Club

Accessibility: Fully accessible, on one floor. Disabled toilet, ask at bar for key. Full gender neutral toilets. Warning, cobbled floors which are uneven in places. If you require a carer ticket, please contact us at info@lovethyneighbourmusic.co.uk with evidence such as a blue badge or access card. If strobe lighting or standing for long periods of time is an issue, please contact us in advance so we can make arrangements.

Chris Cohen Brighton

Chris Cohen Brighton