For someone who named their album Full Closure and No Details, it's ironic that Gabriella Cohen exposes fragments of a doomed relationship with such detailed minutiae. Through her eyes, the books are still open, the deserted bed is still warm and her past is still happening, referred to in the present tense.
Emotion courses through her psych-garage songs, but it's less a matter of what she says, than of how she says it. On the midtempo rocker "Sever the Walls," she sings, "Don't come back again, my friend" with a detached smile and a boatload of self-confidence, but on "Downtown," she pleads, "Please don't ever let me down / Again," ready to play with fire a couple more times.
Musically, Cohen and her engineer Kate 'Babyshakes' Dillon move through various vintage colours, carefully avoiding aping the artists that inspire them. "Beaches" is too dirty to be the homage to the Mamas and the Papas it first appears to be, while "Alien Anthem" is too idiosyncratic to be lumped together with Jack White sound-alikes. Gabriella Cohen's voice sounds honest, almost humble, and it's definitely her own.
Full Closure and No Details feels more like a journey to the closure Cohen seeks through her songwriting than an answer itself — and what an important and journey it is.
(Dot Dash / Captured Tracks)Emotion courses through her psych-garage songs, but it's less a matter of what she says, than of how she says it. On the midtempo rocker "Sever the Walls," she sings, "Don't come back again, my friend" with a detached smile and a boatload of self-confidence, but on "Downtown," she pleads, "Please don't ever let me down / Again," ready to play with fire a couple more times.
Musically, Cohen and her engineer Kate 'Babyshakes' Dillon move through various vintage colours, carefully avoiding aping the artists that inspire them. "Beaches" is too dirty to be the homage to the Mamas and the Papas it first appears to be, while "Alien Anthem" is too idiosyncratic to be lumped together with Jack White sound-alikes. Gabriella Cohen's voice sounds honest, almost humble, and it's definitely her own.
Full Closure and No Details feels more like a journey to the closure Cohen seeks through her songwriting than an answer itself — and what an important and journey it is.