On his full-length debut as a solo artist, Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist Patrick J Smith builds bridges between surreal electronic music, shoegaze, and plain old pop. And he goes about doing this in the utmost unassuming and genteel way. The outcome is a subtle mix that\u2019s got interesting personality but doesn\u2019t scream for attention.<\/p>\n
The album closer \u201cAsh\u201d sums up Cola<\/i> perfectly. Soothing melodic guitars fill the space of this track that has soft pulsating synthesizers and carefully played drums. The gentle vocals tend not to dominate but instead make a brief appearance before allowing the instrumentation to take over the song completely, which has the sparseness of Kraftwerk-style minimalist electronic music. \u201cIt\u2019s Late\u201d is similar, but is more like a chilled-out dance number, in the same vein as Ulrich Schnauss\u2019 work.<\/p>\n
Opening cut \u201cAlgernon\u201d has a dancy rhythm but is more upbeat, thanks to its warm and sunny guitar riff, sounding more like a conventional dream pop track. \u201cJcult\u201d also has the cordial and playful feel associated with dream pop, with a lovely twist where Smith elevates the song\u2019s sonic beauty with guitars that sound like they have been artificially chopped up and reassembled, which is really cool.<\/p>\n
\u201cFade In Nylon,\u201d \u201cGlue,\u201d \u201cI Don\u2019t Believe It,\u201d and \u201cCut Thru\u201d are more like traditional shoegaze numbers, with edgy yet melodic guitars. Even though these cuts are more energetic, they still resonate with Cola<\/i>\u2019s overall calmness and mellowness.<\/p>\n
Dream pop can be a genre of extremes. On one end, it could be extremely aloof and suffocating in the interest of hiding its timidity, and on the other, can be cloyingly pleasing. Cola<\/i> can be found somewhere in the middle, with just the right amount of mettle and affability, which is kind of refreshing. In fact, this disc is refreshing; literally, as listening to it feels like drinking a cold beer on a picture-perfect summer day \u2013 or cola for that matter. What an appropriate album title!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":33830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10388],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-45652","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-a-beacon-school","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45652"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45652"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}