Cool It Sam Cohen

• 1 Let the Mountain Come to You 03:49
• 2 Pretty Lights 04:54
• 3 The Garden 03:49
• 4 Unconditional Love 02:59
• 5 Don't Shoot the Messenger 02:54
• 6 Last Dream 04:06
• 7 Kepler 62 04:27
• 8 A Farewell to Arms 02:39
• 9 Midnight Conqueror 03:17
• 10 El Dorado 04:15
• Total Runtime 37:09

Info for Cool It

A whirling dervish of psychedelic power pop, pitchfork has called his work willfully chaotic and highly refined. Paste has dubbed it a sonic tapestry. Introducing: Sam Cohen.

I’m Sam Cohen, and I’ve been making records for kind of a long time. The first time, I was 18. I wrote angsty songs about my girlfriend leaving me and recorded them along with some rockabilly and mambo covers in several midnight to 7 sessions in Houston, TX. I moved to Boston to learn some chords, formed a band, and made a record in two days. It was horrible. We redeemed it with a home recorded EP that nobody ever heard. The guitars were phenomenal.

That morphed into Apollo Sunshine. We spent a year making a record that was weird and fun, though, at that time, we were singing like some gladass castratos. We spent the next two years touring ceaselessly. I think we might have been pretty cool at that point. Dirty dogs. Life on the road. America. The Band.

We moved into a farmhouse and made our most boring record. It was the most successful thing I’ve ever done. We released a third album to soft applause and broke up. A few years later, people started to admit liking, even loving it.

After that, I was living in Brooklyn and started Yellowbirds to be more of a solo thing. I made records I still like to this day. I made stopmotion collage videos to accompany the music, and started to put a little world together. It’s still there on the internet. I got to do some stuff, too: The National had us at All Tomorrow’s Parties, my bandmate Josh and I played with Bob Weir (several times), we toured a bit, Rolling Stone wrote about me (.com, whatever).

So those Yellowbirds records were pretty good, and people started asking me to produce their records. I worked on a ton of albums; playing, producing, engineering, collaborating in many different ways (sometimes with famous people).

I started to hear what I sound like, so I became Sam Cohen and made my latest record, Cool It. It’s mostly just me alone in a room, playing guitars, drums, bass, synths, singing, recording in both haphazard and elaborate methods. A few songs have my beloved Yellowbirds bandmates (Josh Kaufman, Annie Nero, and Brian Kantor).

If you’re reading this, you’re on the internet, maybe thinking about listening to a single mp3 by an artist you’ve never heard of.

Well Hoss, take her for a whirl. I stand behind this shit.

Sam Cohen, guitar, bass drums, organ, synth, percussion, and vocals
Brian Kantor, drums (on tracks 1, 6, and 8)
Josh Kaufman, guitar (on tracks 1 and 6 and Juno on 8)
Annie Nero, bass (on tracks 1 and 8)
Kevin Ratterman, tambourine (on tracks 1, 6, and 8 and second drums on 9)

Recorded by Sam Cohen in Brooklyn and Woodstock, NY sans studio
Tracks 1, 6, and 8 recorded by Jesse Lauter at The Five and Dime in Brooklyn, NY
Mixed by Kevin Ratterman at La La Land Studio in Louisville, KY
Mastered by Joe Lambert at JLM in Brooklyn, NY
Produced by Sam Cohen

Sam Cohen
2015 is the year that guitarist, songwriter, producer, and animator SAM COHEN sets out on his sweeping solo project. Formerly a core member of Apollo Sunshine and the man behind Yellowbirds, Cohen spent the last decade touring and making records, mostly in Brooklyn, treading the tenuous boundaries between the roughhewn, the psychedelic, and the just plain timelessly cool.

Along the way he’s lent his guitar playing to the likes of Bob Weir, Norah Jones, CeeLo, and labelmate EDJ. Cohen also directs a beloved annual recreation of The Last Waltz that has featured Nels Cline, Cass McCombs, and former bandmate Twin Shadow, amongst dozens of others.

Cool It, Cohen’s solo debut, is an extension of the kaleidoscopic terrain evident on previous projects, but where those records rested blissfully in the sonic ether, Cool It reaches outward with more directness than ever, dropping a spotlight on Cohen’s arresting and unconventional songwriting. The melodic ebb and flow might call Harry Nilsson to mind, while guitars and synths flicker under song forms, occasionally overtaking them in fits of molten stoner rock.Dynamic vocal deliveries turn sharp corners, ranging from gruff to tender, sometimes within a single stanza.

Cohen plays and recorded everything on the album himself (save a few guest appearances from his former Yellowbirds compatriots), largely in a weeklong flurry in upstate New York. One creative gesture, captured with a lifetime’s worth of accumulated gear. Interestingly, all of the record’s lead synth hooks are performed on heavily processed guitars, a technique that saturates every mix with the feel of Cohen’s expansive and particular guitar virtuosity.

Pitchfork has called his work “willfully chaotic” and “highly refined” in the same review, while Paste has dubbed it “bedroom pop” and “a sonic tapestry.” Plaudits aside, he is an artist without consensus, evasive as ever, and finally all of the monikers, collusions, and alteregos are stripped away.

This album contains no booklet.