COBRAH’s long-awaited debut album ‘Torn’ comes eight years after she first burst onto the scene with her thudding cuts of spine-tingling fetish pop. From ‘IDFKA’ to ‘Brand New Bitch’, each subsequent release has plundered new terrains in techno, pop and electronic, centring female pleasure on stages across the world, or in studio sessions with some of the underground’s best and brightest (Ashnikko, LSDXOXO, Ayesha Erotica).
The NME Cover artist didn’t want ‘Torn’ to be a total reinvention, but knew shedding a little mystique would help introduce the woman behind the latex. “I keep my words inside, write to ease the mind / Leave the thoughts behind, but I don’t know what you hide,” she coos over a symphony of stirring synths on the record’s first single and title track. The track speaks to both the metaphorical and sonic shifts in her work, an evolution of the self that cherishes “the beauty in growing pains, of moving on and finding a new path”.
Similar moments of cautious soul-bearing are dotted throughout the 11-track album, masked behind rumbling sirens (‘Dog’) or employed in a strung-out resetting of pace (‘Charming’). But if you think for even a moment that the singer has lost her penchant for braggadocio here, you’re dead wrong. Hitting like whiplash after the sombre musings of ‘Torn’, a triplet of pulsing club tracks follow in the classic COBRAH tenor: bratty, brash and bitchy. Take ‘Hush’, which practices the breathy control of an early-2000s Britney classic, or ‘IG’, an admittedly conceited thump-strut anthem for those of us always primed to fight an imaginary enemy.
Having kept a close stable of collaborators throughout her career, COBRAH now welcomes songwriter Tove Burman (Addison Rae, NewJeans) and Illangelo (The Weeknd) into the fold on ‘Torn’. Helping her navigate the darker and pleasurable new recesses of her sound, American producer Machinedrum also lends the proceedings some of his trademark textural allure, amping up the brash and skeletal sonics featured on ‘Unoriginal’ and ‘Hit Girl’. “You’ve got something everybody wants, lean into it, show them who you are,” COBRAH snarls on the latter as flickering kick drums come into full focus, “Hit girl, it girl / you’re a superstar.”
By the time we reach the climax of this journey, COBRAH has detailed many of her deepest fantasies, revealing a complex relationship to the power of love and those who inflict it: how it can be transcendent, punishing, dangerous and cloying, sometimes even all of the above. “What you waiting for? I’m all yours,” she relents in the album’s shimmering witch-house closer ‘Really Hard’, though it’s not really a question, more a stab at fleshing out her devotion.
At the end, we find ourselves given over to the exhilarating pursuit of total pleasure COBRAH details so unflinchingly throughout – all the titillating highs and detrimental lows. Operating between the vectors of domination and a newfound sense of vulnerability, she emerges from the ashes of ‘Torn’ as a new artist, forever changed and ready to take on new sonic terrains. Just don’t ask her to give up the latex.
