Music Monday: “Half Life”, by Smith & Cohen

France is having some serious social unrest; there’s just something special about French students. I approve.

I don’t have much more to say about that, but in general it seems like progress.

So, some music that I like.

I’ve listened to this one a lot since I bought it this summer. I put it on for some quiet music on a family road trip this past weekend, and the high-school kid asked what it was so he could listen to it some more.

It’s good, and gets better the more you listen to it, is what I’m getting at here.

“Half Life”, by Smith & Cohen.

Smith & Cohen describe it in their Subvert blurb as:

Half Life is the sound of Smith & Cohen coming home to themselves – a record written for the middle years, where longing and contentment sit side by side, and small moments carry the weight of memory. Across eleven songs, Karl Smith and Pete Cohen (who formerly went by the name Sodastream) trace the shape of modern life: friendship, parenthood, heartbreak, hope, and the slow work of making peace with where you’ve landed.
Most of the album was performed entirely by Smith and Cohen and the result is intimate and unmistakably theirs: pulsing double bass, textured acoustic guitar, analogue haze, and a ghostly bowed bass that winds its way in and out of songs throughout. On drums and in the producer’s chair, long-time collaborator Marty Brown brings his deft, unhurried touch to the arrangements, accentuating the dynamics but always letting the songs speak for themselves.
The exception is ‘Fields of green’, a bittersweet duet featuring The Orbweavers, where Marita Dyson’s voice links up with Smith’s for an aching chorus, highlighted by Stuart Flanagan’s incandescent electric guitar. The guest spot feels natural: a nod to friendship and the interconnectedness that underpins so much of the record.
Lyrically, Half Life speaks to the everyday mess and quiet transcendence of adulthood, midweek regrets, suburban heartbreak, and the moments of grace in between. There’s melancholy here, but also resilience and flashes of joy.
For Smith & Cohen, Half Life is both a reckoning and a renewal: a new chapter for a new time. It’s an album that acknowledges what’s passed, but insists there’s still much to hope for.

So take that for whatever a record label blurb is worth.

It’s definitely melancholic, which a lot of the music I like tends to be; the vocals are soft, in front of largely-accoustic instrumentation but with a well-chosen touch of electronic effects.

Nothing here conflicts with anything else; it all blends without any instrument losing its individual presence.

It’s a very good mix; kudos to the sound engineering.

One interesting aspect to this, for folks like me who’ve lived in the Northern hemisphere our whole lives, is that the seasonal imagery feels odd; lyrics about the April sun slipping behind winter clouds are strange when you’re used to April being late spring.

Outstanding tracks:

They’re all good, but “Fields of green” is in a class of its own.