Taking a step away from her work as frontwoman of The Furrs, Gabriella Cohen has delivered her first solo record, Full Closure And No Details; an album with the same sweetness and thorns of a black rose.
Cohen crafts a dark slacker grunge-pop sound, her work feeling like the natural offspring of Courtney Barnett, The Velvet Underground, and The Cure. Opening song Beaches contains the cruel stupor of romance, as though Cohen is inviting you to go skipping down the beach, kicking over kids’ sandcastles and laughing all the way. I Don’t Feel So Alive is a seductive invitation to give up, grow a beard and/or beer belly, sit on the porch and just watch life go by. Tracks like Piano Song and Sever The Walls see Cohen’s voice drenched in the echoes of some dark and empty bar, full of a bleak darkness that wouldn’t seem out of place on the soundtrack for True Detective.
There’s a character to Cohen’s voice that is both charming and winging, and it’s difficult to ever work out whether it’s enjoyable or irritating, but the riffs and melodies soothe and coax you into the affirmative.
When you need to flip life a big “F-you”, Full Closure And No Details is the album for the job. It’s dark, it’s rebellious, it’s intoxicating, and it’s a beautiful debut.
By Daniel Prior
