Album review: Cobson – s/t
I always like to know a little bit about the bands I listen to, it doesn’t shape my opinion of their music but it does help give an idea of where they’re coming from. With Cobson it’s been pretty tough finding anything about them at all. I know the band are French (you’d have to be an idiot not to spot that one!), though not what part of France they come from. I also know they play two guitars, a piano and drums but from the pictures I’ve seen the band consists of two guys and a girl, so who’s multitasking I’m not sure.
And that’s all I know, so now we’ve established that I’d make a rubbish detective, let’s get back to the matter in hand! Cobson describe themselves as indie/rock/shoegaze and while indie/rock is fair enough there’s very little evidence of shoegaze here. There are some other, more interesting influences though; listen carefully and you can hear shades of the Long Blondes, Sinead O’Connor (before she hooked up with Prince), Blondie and jazz. Wait, come back! Don’t forget that Cobson are French, so it’s not that surprising that a smoky jazz club vibe runs though the veins of this album and when it comes to the fore in tracks like ‘Spoiled Child’ it works really well. Generally the songs vary between polished pop songs (‘No Coming Back’, This is So Us’, Ch811n’) and rockier lo-fi ones (‘Rubbish, ‘I Won’t Let You Go’) where Anna’s sexy French vocals give way to a more shouty delivery matched by the rest of the band ramping up the amps. My favourite tracks are ‘I won’t let You Go’ and ‘Quiet’ which starts with just acoustic guitar and vocals for the first half then slowly picks up tempo as the drums, keyboards and electric guitars build to a rousing finale, but the whole album is good. It’s a bit of a shame there are no songs sung in French but it’s a strong debut and refreshingly different from most for what’s going on in the UK right now! 4/5
Mark Cousens
Out now on AP6
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