Chris Cohen
On July 12th, Chris Cohen will release Paint a Room, his fourth full-length and debut effort for Hardly Art. Sublime and sunlit, this collection of 10 songs considers dreamy new ways out of old predicaments, clearly stating the problem and dancing and singing their way somewhere new.
Cohen has never had as much to sing so directly as he does on Paint a Room. If Cohen’s meanings have previously lurked inside the tessellated musical layers he built alone, they are newly clear and resonant here, animated and underscored for the first time by a band playing in real-time. Enlisting help from longtime touring bandmates Davin Givhan (bass), Josh da Costa (drums), and Jay Israelson (keyboards), he built demos in a dusty garage of a suburban Altadena rental and tried something new—he took the songs on tour with that crew, yielding total control by letting them fill in or flourish their own parts as they saw fit.
Cohen called in a few friends to help, with multi-instrumentalist and composer Jeff Parker contributing the fluttering horn arrangement on “Damage” and Parker’s 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. Paint a Room was produced and engineered by Chris Cohen, mixed by Kenny Gilmore (Weyes Blood), and Mastered by Mike Nolte at Eureka Mastering.
Opening Act: Eleanor Friedberger
Eleanor Friedberger is a musician who grew up in Oak Park, IL. She studied film and American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. After a brief stint in London, she moved to New York City where she formed the band The Fiery Furnaces with her brother Matthew in 2000. They recorded nine albums and last performed together at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona in 2011. Her first solo album, Last Summer was released later that year on Merge Records. She has since released three more critically acclaimed albums and toured extensively in North America, Europe and Australia. Throughout her career, Friedberger has comfortably occupied the worlds of art, fashion, music and performance. She has collaborated with The Andy Warhol Museum in Exposed, live-scoring previously unseen Warhol films, has performed regularly in the 8G Band on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers, has appeared in numerous advertising campaigns including the iconic Italian fashion label Miu Miu, and participated and appeared in the renowned multi-media artist Doug Aitken's experimental train project and subsequent film, Station to Station. Friedberger currently lives in Ulster County, NY.