Paint A Room (Red Vinyl LP)

The Hardly Art debut by accomplished singer-songwriter and longtime Deerhoof member Chris Cohen is a gem of casually complicated pop.

Chris Cohen has also performed as a member of The Curtains, Natural Dreamers, and backing Cass McCombs, Danielson, Kurt Vile, and more. He produced Weyes Blood's 2016 album Front Row Seat to Earth, and work by Gun Outfit and Le Ren.

On Paint a Room, Cohen's music feels like a warm spring breeze, easy to love and gentle to feel. But it's often carrying something heavy, as if blowing in from some unseen storm cloud. Paint a Room both reckons with reality and conjures an alternate one, where nighttime walks and a neighbour's wind chimes offer endless escapes for the imagination, space for the mind to roam. Sublime and sun-lit, these 10 songs consider dreamy new ways out of old predicaments, clearly stating the problem and dancing and singing their way somewhere new.

Paint a Room features Jeff Parker contributing the fluttering horn arrangement on "Damage," and Parker collaborator Josh Johnson (who produced Meshell Ndegeocello's Grammy-Award-winning album The Omnichord Real Book) supplying flute, sax, and clarinet arrangements throughout the record.