Sonically, the album builds upon Ora Cogan’s previous record Bells in the Ruins, blurring the distinctions between dream pop, psych, country and folk to create a sound rooted in traditional balladry yet constantly pushing boundaries. Guest appearances from the likes of Y La Bamba and Lankum’s Cormac Mac Diarmada add further dimensions, and the result is somehow at once cinematic and intimate, Cogan accumulating small details as a means to broach the wider sweep of our times. A style willing to delve into the darker side of things, to poke bruises and scars alike, but always with the purpose of challenging the cruelties of our world, and with the unfailing hope of emerging on some more welcoming other side. “I want to feel good,” as Cogan concludes. “I want other people to feel good. My way of getting there is going towards the pain, through the swamps and finding beauty in the ridiculousness of being human. If it hurts, I want to roll around in it a bit before metamorphosing.”

With its picture of social isolation, the album’s lead single ‘Cowgirl’ serves as our introduction to this world. A sedate jam that’s slow in the way late night always is, the air clouded with one too many cigarettes, something like panic or regret building with a slow drip. But counter to this rising sensation is a sense of distance too. The track plays as a half dream, an out of body experience, a survey of those things felt so keenly at every other hour of the day as taken from above. “There was blood in the corner of your mouth / Stars were falling,” as Cogan sings, “All the dogs were howling / Streetlights were glowing.” Once upon a time, it might have seemed a contradiction to offer this weave of the physical and ethereal, the close and distant, but we have all lived through the same trauma. Have come learn there is no contradiction at all.

I went out on the roof
I felt so dizzy and
I saw the wasteland moving towards me
Someone come get me now

The single comes complete with a suitably cinematic video directed by K Bray Jorstad, utilising VHS/Super 8 textures to evoke the barroom smoke and nocturnal atmosphere. Watch it below:

Formless is out on the 25th August via Prism Tongue Records and you can pre-order it from the Prism Tongue Bandcamp page.

Cover photo by Stasia Garraway, album design by Malcolm Jack

The post Ora Cogan – Cowgirl appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The Mazzy Star influence is immediately apparent, as on the velvet curtain sway of opener ‘Sleeping’. David Parry adds bass and slide guitar which, along with Keenan Mittag-Degala percussion and subtle synths from Reggie Bast, carry Cogan’s vocals like an updraft. The track comes complete with a video, directed by Natasha Lavdovsky, which doubles down on the surreal atmosphere and proves to be the perfect companion.

It finds the masked figure from the album’s cover floating in the ocean alone, a stark vision of otherness that alternates between floating languorously, struggling to climb onto a small rock and standing indifferent as the tide ebbs and flows around it. This oddness is contrasted with cuts to spangles of sunlight dancing across the water’s surface in a fitting visual allusion to the transient beauty across the album.

and all through the ruins
the bells are ringing out

Bells in the Ruins is never content to settle into a groove, morphing and reshaping across its nine tracks. The jittery, off-kilter ‘Kills’ feels almost manic next to the lush and lazy ‘Tell’, while ‘Skull’ lands somewhere between the two, a persistent drum beat doing its best to stop Cogan’s ethereal vocals from drifting off into the ether. ‘Fixe’ represents both one of the record’s strangest moments and the clearest representation of its spirit, the guitar sneaking and slinking over ticking percussion and a swirling background ambience as Cogan delivers vocals in a breathy rush, each line spilling from the end of the last.

Bells in the Ruins is out now on Prism Tongue Records and you can get it from the Ora Cogan Bandcamp page.

Photo by Zoe Alma

The post Ora Cogan – Bells in the Ruins appeared first on Various Small Flames.