Chris Cohen's quietly awestruck presence, straddling melancholy and yearning, is unmistakable, even if you don't really know who he is. It informs The Runners Four-era Deerhoof, Curtains’ impressionistic scrapes, and the gossamer, doe-eyed pop of Cryptacize, the quartet the Los Angeles musician fronted alongside fellow vocalist Nedelle Torrisi. His sensibility is theatrical in a generous, arresting way, as though his primary prerogative is to clear room on his futon for listeners to safely explore a broad spectrum of common emotions.
This ethos finds its fullest expression in Cohen’s solo albums. Overgrown Path, his warm, homespun 2012 debut, was a welcoming way to lose track of 33 minutes, a worthy descendent of introspective 1970s singer-songwriter LPs. Four years later, Cohen sounds lost in a different sort of wilderness; *As If Apart *trades the optimism, existential wonder, and woozy jangle of *Overgrown Path *for in for heartbreak. The disorienting sting of absence informs lyrics and vocals, while *Apart *is pointedly off in a musical sense: every hook shivering near the precipice of melody. Given Cohen’s CV, it can’t be a complete coincidence that this particular vision of splitsville often sounds a lot like an early Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti cassette.
A psychedelic carousel of slow-motion bad cheer, opener "Torrey Pine" sets the tone. Fanciful guitar chords circle and dog-pile one another, their colors fading out, every verse seeming to dead-end in the same two words: "without you." "In a Fable" glances back wistfully at the last days of an acquaintance, while the stark, minimalist "Sun Has Gone Away" confronts absence with doubled vocals and echoing pianos.
Single "Drink from a Silver Cup" appears to be As If Apart at its most engaging until you’ve really *heard *it. The laughter of children at play introduces a certain sadness at the outset; the metaphorical silver cup the narrator imagines could rekindle a romance is denial, hope, and fantasy rolled into one. The lyric is as achingly beautiful as it is painful. "Yesterdays on My Mind," meanwhile, preaches hope from the other side of despair "I’ll give it some time/but yesterday’s on my mind," he sighs on the chorus. Whether autobiographical or artistic, As If Apart is a powerful, exquisitely realized journey, the sort of bummer that sounds strongest in that alien hour between when you’re supposed to fall asleep and when you should be jerking awake.
