Chris Cohen

Schedule

Thu Dec 05 2024 at 08:00 pm

UTC+02:00

Location

Aalhaus | Hamburg, HH

Advertisement
Chris Cohen | Live
(Hardly Art, US)
Tickets: https://www.tixforgigs.com/Event/57799
Präsentiert von ByteFM

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.

In the past, Cohen made records in spells of isolation, phases when, as he puts it, he would “try to make my world a lot smaller.” He would play any of a dozen or so instruments until he stumbled upon something interesting, then slowly build upward and outward upon the idea. The method was solitary and stepwise, an act of accretion and deletion.

Cohen, though, has been playing live with bassist Davin Givhan, drummer Josh da Costa, and keyboardist Jay Israelson in some fashion for the better part of a decade. This time around, then, he built demos in the dusty garage of the suburban Altadena rental that smelled like old wood and gasoline and tried something new—he took the songs on tour with that crew, yielding total control by letting them fill in or flourish their own parts as they saw fit. They came back home and began recording as a band.
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.

Cohen had another hobby as a kid: transcendental meditation, a practice his parents taught him when he was six. It’s still part of his life, a window into observing his thought processes, habits, and relationship to the rest of the world. Making music—and, turns out, writing lyrics for it—works in a similar way for Cohen, as he’s able to understand and then articulate notions that wouldn’t be so easy with the absolutism of mere words. 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 sunlit, these 10 songs consider dreamy new ways out of old predicaments, clearly stating the problem and dancing and singing their way somewhere new.
Advertisement

Where is it happening?

Aalhaus, Eggerstedtstraße 39, 22765 Hamburg, Deutschland,Hamburg, Germany

Event Location & Nearby Stays:

Aalhaus

Host or Publisher Aalhaus

It's more fun with friends. Share with friends

Discover More Events in Hamburg

Weinhopping PLUS Hamburg, 05.12.2024
Thu Dec 05 2024 at 07:00 pm Weinhopping PLUS Hamburg, 05.12.2024

Hamburg

FOOD-DRINKS TRIPS-ADVENTURES
Studiokonzert Klavier
Thu Dec 05 2024 at 07:00 pm Studiokonzert Klavier

Hochschule für Musik und Theater

WORKSHOPS MUSIC
Warm Exit (be), Glaza
Thu Dec 05 2024 at 07:30 pm Warm Exit (be), Glaza

MS Stubnitz

MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
Alexander von Schlippenbach Trio
Thu Dec 05 2024 at 07:30 pm Alexander von Schlippenbach Trio

JazzHall (an der HfMT)

ART THEATRE
Bilderbuch \u2022 Hamburg \u2022 Docks
Thu Dec 05 2024 at 09:00 pm Bilderbuch • Hamburg • Docks

DOCKS

ENTERTAINMENT MUSIC
MonoNeon | Hamburg
Thu Dec 05 2024 at 09:00 pm MonoNeon | Hamburg

Knust Hamburg

FLEA
Wladimir Kaminer \/ Mahlzeit -  Geschichten von Europas Tischen
Thu Dec 05 2024 at 09:00 pm Wladimir Kaminer / Mahlzeit - Geschichten von Europas Tischen

Fabrik Hamburg

Kunstadvent Blankenese
Fri Dec 06 2024 at 02:00 pm Kunstadvent Blankenese

Mühlenberger Weg 64A

FESTIVALS ART
Louise tanzt - \u00dc50 Disco in Altona
Sun Dec 17 2023 at 05:00 pm Louise tanzt - Ü50 Disco in Altona

Bürgertreff Altona - Gefionstraße 3

PARTIES ENTERTAINMENT
DJ Night by WERFT @INNSiDE Hamburg Hafen
Fri Jun 07 2024 at 08:00 pm DJ Night by WERFT @INNSiDE Hamburg Hafen

INNSiDE by Meliá Hamburg Hafen

PARTIES ENTERTAINMENT
Live Musik & Drinks in der Bar Mangold
Thu Jul 04 2024 at 08:00 pm Live Musik & Drinks in der Bar Mangold

Bar Mangold

MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
Sip n' Paint HAMBURG Special
Sat Jul 06 2024 at 07:00 pm Sip n' Paint HAMBURG Special

Hamburg

SIP-AND-PAINT MUSIC
Candlelight: Queen vs Ed Sheeran
Fri Aug 23 2024 Candlelight: Queen vs Ed Sheeran

MS Bleichen

CANDLELIGHT-CONCERTS CONCERTS
Korol i Shut
Tue Sep 03 2024 Korol i Shut

Halle 424 Jürgen Carstensen e. K.

MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
Candlelight: Hommage an Ludovico Einaudi in der Kulturkirche Altona
Tue Sep 03 2024 Candlelight: Hommage an Ludovico Einaudi in der Kulturkirche Altona

Kulturkirche Altona

CANDLELIGHT-CONCERTS CONCERTS
Harry Potter
Tue Sep 10 2024 Harry Potter

Halle 424

MUSIC ART
Adventskonzert: Weihnachtliche Kl\u00e4nge
Tue Sep 10 2024 Adventskonzert: Weihnachtliche Klänge

Halle 424

MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT
Candlelight: Romantic Piano
Sun Sep 15 2024 Candlelight: Romantic Piano

Kulturkirche Altona

ENTERTAINMENT CANDLELIGHT-CONCERTS
Candlelight: Rockklassiker
Mon Sep 30 2024 Candlelight: Rockklassiker

Ethnologisches Museum

CANDLELIGHT-CONCERTS CONCERTS
Candlelight: Broadway Musicals on Strings
Tue Oct 01 2024 Candlelight: Broadway Musicals on Strings

Kulturkirche Altona

CANDLELIGHT-CONCERTS CONCERTS

What's Happening Next in Hamburg?

Discover Hamburg Events