On Friday, the debut LP from Montreal trio Cola, Deep In View, arrives via Next Door Records. The new project from former Ought members Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy and US Girls/The Weather Station drummer Evan Cartwright. In support of the album the band will be touring in the UK and North America, with stops in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Full tour dates can be found below.

“I love when I find a record that has many different angles from which it can be approached,” Darcy explains. The band’s affinity for polysemy is first-and-foremost a chord struck in the name Cola, which most obviously is the fizzy beverage that Darcy deadpans is ”bound by laws older than man to poison most ordinary life on earth” in closing track “Landers”, but also can be traced back to a term in poetics as well as an acronym about social security that refers to “Cost of Living Adjustment”. Cola is also about drinking in the endless crispness of a streamlined (and streamed) world, and the often unsettling sense of satisfaction and emptiness that subsequently sets in. Fundamentally, this record is about passion and what happens to a person when they find themselves increasingly encountering a passionless landscape of consumption. This peeling back of layers is integral to both Cola’s mindset as well as their worldview, which despite a claustrophobic time in the making sees them joyfully exploring new realms as musicians.

Cola started collaborating in fall 2019 when Darcy and Stidworthy, both formerly of Ought, reached out to their friend Cartwright, who they had frequently met on the road while he was drumming with various other projects. “It wasn’t the post-Ought band right off the bat,” Darcy says, “we really just took time to enjoy the process of collaborating and writing songs together.” The band’s organic chemistry solidified quickly after a few sessions of jamming in-person. Then, as the pandemic began, they were forced to decamp and write songs separately. Working in solitude ended up becoming a “defining color as well as a barrier” to the album, says Darcy. He notes that he wrote the lyrics to “Fulton Park” as a “dream landscape”, a sort of alternative to the frustration and depression he was experiencing at the time.

The imposed isolation of writing at home led Stidworthy (who helped compose the album’s guitar parts and plays the piano on “Landers”) to “create little worlds with the songs”. The keen brushstrokes of all three members combined feels languidly tactile, replete with profound meaning that is almost archeological in its sense of economy and personal touch. This sense of relaxed exploration could only occur because of the mutual trust between the trio: Stidworthy adds, “I could go really far in cultivating a mood for a demo and send it to them and know that it could only improve.” Meanwhile, Cartwright (who also plays guitar on the project and coded Supercollider synth parts in the studio), found that he was subliminally incorporating drum ideas and patterns from when he first started playing as a teen, embedded deep in his muscle memory.

Cola
Deep In View
Track List
Next Door Records

1. Blank Curtain
2. So Excited
3. At Pace
4. Met Resistance
5. Degree
6. Water Table
7. Gossamer
8. Mint
9. Fulton Park
10. Landers

Cola 2022 Tour Dates

06.18 – Montreal, QC @ Suoni Il Popolo Festival
06.20 – Winooski, VT @ Monkey House
06.21 – Providence, RI @ AS220s
06.22 – Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s
06.23 – Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right
06.24 – Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie
06.25 – Washington, DC @ DC9
06.27 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle (Back Room)
06.28 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
06.29 – Nashville, TN @ DRKMTTR
07.01 – Dallas, TX @ Ruins
07.02 – Austin, TX @ The Parish
07.05 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge
07.06 – San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar
07.07 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
07.08 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
07.10 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
07.11 – Vancouver, BC @ The Biltmore
07.12 – Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
07.14 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux
07.16 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
07.18 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
07.19 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry
07.20 – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
07.22 – Detroit, MI @ Magic Bag
07.23 – Toronto, ON @ Baby G
08.20 – Crickhowell, UK @ Green Man Festival
08.23 – Brighton, UK @ Prince Albert
08.24 – London, UK @ Moth Club
08.25 – Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
08.26 – Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade Bristol
08.27 – Birkenhead, UK @ Future Yard
08.28 – Sunderland, UK @ Pop Recs Ltd.
08.30 – Edinburgh, UK @ Sneaky Pete’s
08.31 – Glasgow, UK @ Broadcast
09.1 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
09.2 – Nottingham, UK @ Rough Trade
09.3 – Manchester, UK @ Manchester Psych Fest (Yes)
09.4 – Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival

Pre-order Deep in View by Cola HERE