New Alhambra is held together by a variety of samples, snippets of recordings that act as tiny, fervid interludes between the deadpan songs. From wrestling commentary to the title track’s televangelist, these clips are packed with half-remembered meaning, sharp, alluring passions which time has driven out of reach. The result appears to be indifference, the waves of agony and joy synchronising perfectly and flat-lined by destructive interference. For every wound avoided is a comfort missed, the roulette wheel of pleasure and pain thrown out in favour of a vague and nagging ache that no amount of distraction can overcome. The question is, do we accept this trade-off?

For me, this begins to get at the biggest misconception about Cothran’s songs. Many view his impassive style as the message of his music, the emotionless delivery sucking life from his poetic words, showing his deadened apathy toward a meaningless life etc., but really it’s the other way around. Cothran is challenging his numbness with his words, refusing to give in, attempting to break out as opposed to barricading himself in. Do we accept the trade-off? On New Alhambra, as typified by closing track ‘Wastes of Time’, Cothran says no:

“If you try I will try,
when we fuck up it’s alright,
there is always more to life,
than all these wastes of time.”

When you take a second look you find the entire album illuminated in this way, light seeping through the cracks in the shadows. What first appear brief sparks are revealed to be points of a sustained blaze which guide you from the murk, like some form of celestial navigation for our age of smog and light pollution. Suddenly the samples begin to sound sincere, what was mistaken for an ironic smirk revealed to be the fragile, vulnerable smile of someone who doesn’t get much practice. The tables have turned 180°, no longer stark, bravely honest songs confronting darkness but rather straight-faced, easily-mockable hymns of the light. This is made clear on ‘N.M.S.S.’ (‘No More Sad Songs’), a song whose I initially assumed ironic that turned out to be an ode to the unshakeable faith of a better future:

“Someday never came so I keep waiting
I will go to sleep still believing

No more sad songs
I will serve no purpose
I love everyone that I have ever known.”

This is not a born-again Love-The-World-Because-Life-Is-Great sort of album. Elvis Depressedly will not mend broken bones or cast out demons or have you walking across hot coals. Instead they say that afflictions are not all there is, that you are not defined solely by your circumstances. They say that peace and hope are never out of reach and offer an achievable version of optimism, one which does not require manic enthusiasm or God-like goodwill but instead a pinch of determination and a firm belief in love.

New Alhambra is out now on Run For Cover Records, including some rather lovely vinyl editions.

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The album’s title is a good introduction to its theme, that is: what happens after university finishes and takes all of your money and structure and most of your friends with it (a theme which is all too relevant for a lot of people I know). Put simply, Moving Songs is an album about being suddenly unmoored in the big wide world, about moving around trying to find a place in which you fit. So when on opener ‘Take on Me’ Bennett sings, “Sitting in my room, another year behind me, sitting on the floor…I’m not sure what I’m doing, all I know is I gotta keep on moving”, it’s pretty easy to see what kind of place she was in when writing these songs. ‘Moo Moo Movin’ is another track which deals with constant relocation (duh! look at the title!), “I lived in a pink room for a few weeks and I lived in a shed for almost a year and I lived in New Jersey ’til I was 13 and every since I’ve moved”.

And no matter what we’d like to believe, we aren’t all cowboys who can drift around without thinking, rambling lone wolves for whom physical passage is as inevitable as the passage of time. Moving is difficult. We form relationships with places and the people who live in them, relationships that can be painful to break. Listening to these songs it is apparent that Bennett knows this. So when, on ‘Moving Song’ she sings, “And honestly I don’t even wanna leave, cause I got my friend the oak tree, when the wind blows she says hey!”, it’s clear that she is, on some level at least, being entirely serious.

The album also touches on how this roaming can become a habit and, like all habits, can lead to some questionable decision making, about how moving can actually become more like running away, about resisting that thing they call “Home”. Take these lines from ‘Moo Moo Movin’:

“I eat grapefruit from a green bowl
and wonder why we’re moving to philly
when what I want now is an eggplant garden
and neither of us has spent much time in cities
feels to late to reconsider
even though it isn’t”

There is also a knock-on effect of this phenomenon, namely the occasional all-encompassing fear that can overwhelm even the most positive of us, the difficulty in experiencing and enjoying the world every day when there’s this big dark and stormy thing called “The Future” looming on the horizon. Bennett approaches this struggle head-on on ‘Day to Day’,

“I’ll try and think about
all I ever wanted
in their backseat
driving home from Brooklyn

Get caught up in dreading
to return to a routine I didn’t create
try not to worry about my life’s trajectory
and just see your face”

Of course, you couldn’t really write songs about moving on without doing some looking back too. Many of the tracks are infused with memories, rising like dust-specked vignettes from Bennett’s brain, evoking a sense of nostalgia and regret, that strange kind of quietly happy sadness that sets in when you really get to thinkin’ ’bout things. You can find examples of such reminiscence all over the album, e.g. on ‘So Much Strange to Give’, “Thinking about four summers ago, driving down quiet back roads in south Jersey, I was stinking of lake water and snack bar grease”, and particularly on ‘The First Time I Hung Out With You’, which is imbued with memories of harmless irresponsibility, full of great lines like:

“The twenty-third time I hung out with you
we lit sparklers from dollar general
in my dark dorm room,
before we did we’d been so blue
then your face lit like it was your birthday
til the sparks fizzled into dust in our hands
poof”

One of my favourite things about Moving Songs is the way it presents these anxieties but also provides reassurance. The most obvious example of this is ‘All You Got to Be When You’re 23’, which takes a soundbite from Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites and forms a kind and heartening chorus out of it:

“All you gotta be
when you’re twenty three
is yourself”

And take note that the above sentiment hold true whether you’re twenty three or fifty three or eighty three. The song acts as a prescribed remedy to worrying about the future and your place in it. There is an answer and the answer is simple – just be yourself. No matter where you wander be sure to hold on tight to the things that make you you (including the people you love) and do your best to enjoy the ride. It turns out the world is actually a pretty cool place. So if you’re reading this review and the worries feel all too familiar then remember remember remember it’s not all that bad. All these swirly scary unsettled times are just a part of growing up into the big boys and girls we’ll one day turn into. And these songs certainly aren’t all gloomy and miserable, there’s eagerness and anticipation here too. As Bennett puts it:

“New things are frightening
but they’re also the most exciting”

You can buy Moving Songs on cassette via Double Double Whammy or as a digital download via the Free Cake For Every Creature Bandcamp page.

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