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So Cow "Best Vacation Ever"
'Best Vacation Ever' by So Cow covers a lot of ground considering it's the work of one young Irish fella and his trusty 4-track recording device. Listening to 'Best Vacation Ever' is pretty much the sound of a man with a schizophrenic mentality toward songwriting and the an immense amount of freedom to explore different ideas due to his choice of recording technique. It's like listening to lots of different records compiled together but somehow So Cow manage to weave some kind of consistency into all the madness. So we get synth pop ditties, acoustic folk ballads, electric lo-fi pop and piano based sing-a -long's. There's also a track that sounds so much like Calvin Johnson it's hard to believe it's not some long lost mysterious Beat Happening B-side or maybe a cheeky cover. This record seems to have a little bit of everything for everyone so it's most definitely worth further investigation. Out now on the ultra reliable Rusted Rail records.
Brian comes from Galway, Ireland. Brian lives in Seoul, South Korea. These songs are mainly very short and sound quite
distinctive in a good ole' fashioned 4 track bedroom punk pop (with a twist) kind-of-a-way. If you can imagine a halfway
point on a bridge between Boyracer and Pumice, this might just be it looser than one; tighter than the other. There's some
nice off key 'cello, wonky piano and what has to be a homage to Calvin Johnson too. Mmmm smiles all round.
This nine track ep is released on the new Irish label Rusted Rail, features a selection of lo-fi home recordings sounding
a bit like the bedroom style little brothers of Sebadoh blended with the strange lo-fi folk sounds of the likes of Future
Pilot a.k.a. and the weird outsider sounds of Daniel Johnston, the album was recorded in South Korea and county Galway,
a mix of mellow psychedelic folk sounds and stop/start indie rock.
An outlier in the equation, sonically and spatially (the man lives in Seoul), So Cow plays a variety of songs which do not
intuit a single sound. The guy's all over the place, touching on a different landmark with each song in the way only 4-track
freedom allows: there's strolling piano sing-along in "Introduction", synth-pop in "Sang Mi & Yu Mi", a nice guitar-ballad in
"The Apologist". Influence is evident as well: "Tillage" sounds like old Destroyer, "Oh For Fuck's Sake" maybe a cheeky Rob Crow
circa Heavy Vegetable/Thingy, and "Bat Toes" something Calvin Johnson. In all, an unexpected trip through the last decade of indie
music by someone with plenty of songs in his head. |