Words by Patrick Stolley//Illustration by Dan Jircitano
I can imagine that as Syd Barrett floated up to the great gig in the sky last year, he had some notion through the ether that somewhere in America Chris Cohen was hard at work on his latest record — The Curtains‘ Calamity. I can imagine Mr. Barrett drifted above the house of Robert Wyatt, winking at
the wheelchair in the window, and reading the face of the oblique genius which seemed to say their craft was in good hands.

Of course, this is my imagination, and these chaps might not seem to be cut from the same cloth all the time, but there is something that binds them together in the thirteen songs on Calamity. If the Curtain crew is unaware of the traces of the masters in these songs, then Chris Cohen is a force to be reckoned with…well, he is anyway, because these songs are truly successes. Successes in the sense that they are perfect, or very nearly perfect, in almost all cases, even in their occasional sloppiness. Roomy, punchy drums with an antique quality anchor these tunes, making a base for clean and brittle guitars, picked melodically and haphazardly under nonchalant vocals. The occasional piano or synth jabs through, in just the right measure. This is a one-man band (with a couple embellishments from John Ringolfer of Half-Handed Cloud) and ones Nedelle Torrisi and Yari Perera on vocals, but never lets on. You’d swear this was a band playing together in a room. It’s difficult to think which track was layed down first, and how they were conceived. Lyrically, the LP seems to be about calamities of one sort or another — sparse as they are (almost haiku-like, and deceptively concise), as in the lyrics to the song “Wysteria”, a terrible affliction:

_“Water will flow underground
Seeds growing under a lamp
Or right in your hand”_

The actual subjects of these songs are many — tornadoes, incurability, manipulation, separation, the presence of luck (absence of bad luck, as if it were mere seconds away at all times). All delivered in a kind of deadpan, detached sort of lullaby-voice. A voice that seems to be observing these songs on a TV, or out a window. The economy of content, while being very clear and plain, at the same time leaves open a multitude of possible meanings.

In the end, this is the kind of smart pop that absolutely satisfies, that is engaging, that will imprint on your memory and hold a place or marker in your life of the time when you listened to it, and if you get it, really like it, you will hold in your hands and turn it over and over, the same way one might hold Opal, or maybe _Rock Bottom_…curious as much about the creation as the creator.

The Curtains
Asthmatic Kitty Records