Anyone can call themselves genreless; anyone can sell their guitars and/or turntables and buy the other. It’s much harder to sound like several genres playing at once, as Philly act Cold Court do. Led by siblings Mini Serrano and Jojo Lavina-Maldonado, they began as a post-punk band in the vein of Black Midi or Geese. After releasing a handful of songs that captured the band in a studio, they steadily embraced Ableton, trying to outdo each other with songs that became increasingly blown-out and distorted. Now they sound like the suit from A Scanner Darkly if it were a band: all genres and eras of music exist equally, but the outline is still human. \ (^_^) / (pronounced “Hands Up”) is their debut EP, the sound of a young band ready to go anywhere.
Like 100 gecs (whom Cold Court grew up listening to, if you want to feel old), they don’t discern between good and bad taste: Lavina-Maldonado has shouted out post-hardcore band Escape the Fate, specifically their first album with perennial online punching bag Ronnie Radke. At the same time, the duo named “Nina” after Nina Simone, and the song bears more than a passing resemblance to “Sinnerman” in the way it vamps on a single chord. Lavina-Maldando remixed “Nina” after an initial release: the first version ends with a guitar processed to sound like a synth, but the final version ends with a synth that’s properly menacing itself. As soon as one influence is audible, Cold Court throws in a noisy interlude, then a surprisingly poppy section, and then a funk breakdown.
For all the invention, these are songs rooted in classic structures: The out-of-phase organs and stuttering guitars in “Nina” scramble a traditional blues progression. “Cola” and the straightforward “Eighty1” suggest Cold Court could go pop—the sound evokes a bad signal from an alternative radio station, and it’s doubtful this duo would take that as an insult. Every song benefits greatly from the presence of Jett Mann and Josh Lopez’s live drums: the only vestige of Cold Court’s early music, the live kit now stands out amid their young noise-pop peers. “Burn” captures live-show energy without sounding remotely real, and, intentionally or not, Cold Court’s music sometimes feels like a modern hyperpop take on genre-agnostic ’90s Black Rock Coalition bands like funk-metal group 24-7 Spyz and shoegaze oddballs the Veldt—particularly when the Veldt’s murkiness resolves into a major-key chorus.
Closer “Light” is the only experiment that doesn’t quite work; blown-out bass, trap hi-hats, a mid-song jazz break, and aggro guitar riffs mesh awkwardly when on most other songs, they’re more cleverly integrated. What holds \ (^_^) / back are the lyrics, almost entirely improvised by Serrano and Lavina-Maldondo during recording. “Nina” has intriguing religious imagery, but most of the words might as well be filler: “Burn” loses a bit of impact when the lyrics are “I just wanna see it burn/Give a fuck about your word.” This style operates on visceral rather than lyrical potency, but from a band this unique and uninhibited, it’s a missed opportunity. The production is confident beyond its years, while the lyrics betray the arrogance of youth—to take on the world, Cold Court must harness both.
