Cola Present New Single/Video, "Skywriter's Sigh," From New Album Out May 8th via Fire Talk

Cola — the trio of Tim Darcy (vocals/guitar), Ben Stidworthy (bass), and Evan Cartwright (percussion) — present their new single/video, “Skywriter’s Sigh,” the closing track from their forthcoming album, Cost of Living Adjustment (out May 8 on Fire Talk Records). Cost of Living Adjustment is the group’s take on a self-titled album — an intricate, beautiful, sometimes strange record — and “Skywriter’s Sigh” is Cola, the band, at their very best. On “Skywriter’s Sigh,” things sizzle and flicker. It touches on the sublime. “Please don’t romanticize a better time,” Darcy pleads in the track’s chorus, “They’ll put your cot outside in the rain.” These cheeky poeticisms on modern life are not new territory for Cola. It is, in Cartwright’s words, “a deepening of what we’ve been doing.” It is the band’s most refined offering. A perfection of carefully honed aesthetic impulses.

Following “Hedgesitting” and “Conflagration Mindset,” a pair of romantic, subtle and deceptively intense singles which collected praise from The FADER, DIY, Consequence, and Stereogum among others, “Skywriter’s Sigh” is presented alongside an evocative video by Maxwell Farrell.

Watch Cola's "Skywriter's Sigh" Video

C.O.L.A. is sort of a self-titled album. It’s an acronym for Cost of Living Adjustment, a fitting conceptual framework for the band’s third record. Why? Because C.O.L.A. considers, among other things, socialism vs. hell. It considers: rolling the dice of life. The eerie and sweet pangs that nostalgia can provoke. Cola, as a band, says Darcy is defined by its “tasteful minimalism.” C.O.L.A., however, is the band’s most maximalist work to date. C.O.L.A., like everything written by the band, is inherently collaborative. The band writes everything separately, then comes together and works in the studio. This division of labor works intuitively. It is a part of the band’s DNA to say, take an arrangement Stidworthy wrote, and then have Darcy and Cartwright build upon it.

One of the goals with C.O.L.A. was to have the melody guide the lyrics. This is a distinct shift from the sprechgesang that has been an anchor for many of Darcy’s earlier records. Here, the vocal melodies are on the same level as all of the other melodies on the record. But the lyrics are no less poetic, no less precise than anything Darcy has written before (“It’s not,” he jokes, “like we’re making a Cocteau Twins song.”) The result is a record that is ruthlessly aware of all of its parts, and treats them all as equally important. C.O.L.A. is a record that speaks to itself: where all of its parts are in direct conversation with each other. Sounds do not blur, even when they are expansive.

C.O.L.A. is full of these clarifying moments: where a whole swirl of feelings become so clear that it almost hurts a little bit. It is abstract, oblique, sometimes strange, whatever you want to call it. But it is also beautiful, in the classic sense. Beautiful like a painting can be beautiful. Really, really gorgeous. Almost chiseled in the way it plays so deliberately with experimentation. It is Cola, the band, at their very best.

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