PREMIERE: Cool Sounds – ‘In Blue Skies’

Is it a crime to not like guitar pop yet? It should be. I’d fight that fight. However I also think ‘is this the genre that I’ll look back on a decade from now and be like “but why?”‘ Whatever, sad guitar pop is just very listenable, is what I’m trying to say. Two releases deep, Cool Sounds (featuring members of probably every other band in Melbourne) have presented us with ‘In Blue Skies’, the first offering off what they’re calling their debut album (they could be three in already depending on which way you cut it), ‘Dance Moves’.

When you name your band something as disarming as Cool Sounds you immediately position yourself on that fine line between banal and banal but in a low key, acceptably ironic way. CS edge into the latter category by writing songs that are emotionally invested in the former; shit that happens to everyone with a frequency that makes it mundane, but still makes you feel feelings that you’re positive no one has ever felt before when they happen to you.

On ‘In Blue Skies’, Dainis Lacey turns his attention to a relationship reluctantly withering away. It’s a sad song with sprinkles of flamenco-esque guitar and Sara Retallick’s vocals echoing Lacey’s longing through the chorus. It’s the kind of track I’d sing into an empty bar 16 G&T’s deep after a crumbly breakup. That’s never happened, but I kind of want it to because then I’d be able to say something about life imitating art. ‘In Blue Skies’ almost takes me there, a place where I’m down but not entirely out, one foot ready to make the next move while the other is stubbornly planted in the past.

If Foals’ Yannis Philippakis was a more mellow human he’d sound exactly like Lacey, and if Lacey wanted to take Cool Sounds in a more extreme direction I’m sure he’d sound like Philippakis yelping into a stadium. For now though, CS are making some consistently…cool…sounds. And I always have room for that in my life.

Dance Moves is due out via Deaf Ambitions late 2016. 

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