COLA - Cost Of Living Adjustment

Four years after their solid debut “Deep In View” and following the partial confirmation of “The Gloss”, Canadian outfit Cola (a project born from the ashes of Ought) return with “Cost Of Living Adjustment”. If Ought's stylistic trademark was the neurotic urgency of post-punk, caught between nihilism and jagged, cinematic rhythms, Cola have progressively smoothed out that raw material. Where the debut “Deep In View” introduced a kind of geometric minimalism and “The Gloss” further rounded off the edges with a cleaner production, on this new record the band loosens the tension even further and thins out the feedback without ever losing that original rigor.

Every note, every drum hit and bass line is locked into place with almost surgical precision: there's no room, then, for improvisation. In particular, a hypnotic, square-shaped rhythm section acts as a bed for a detached, monotone voice that serves as the perfect emotional glue. The album opens with “Forced Position”, built around Ben Stidworthy's bass, which weaves a very dark, circular line, while Darcy's guitar proceeds in raw, spare phrases within a claustrophobic atmosphere that nods to the rigor of vintage Wire. Along the same rhythmic lines comes “Hedgesitting”, driven by drumming in an almost motorik mode, which pushes the track forward through dissonant, abrasive guitar intervals.

Another standout track is “Haveluck Country”, which opens with a guitar hammering out the beat in a sharp, nervous way, before opening up into a dense dialogue with a pulsing bass that builds a taut, restrained tension. The whole thing carries a vague Parquet Courts flavor.

Also worth highlighting is the pairing of “Satre-torial” and “Much Of A Muchness”, where the band's more oblique side comes to the fore. “Satre-torial” is a crooked, almost existentialist track, built on a syncopated tempo and dripping guitar phrases, backing Darcy's detached spoken delivery in a mood of lucid unease. Similar territory is explored in “Much Of A Muchness”, where the drums fragment the rhythm while the guitar lashes out with cold, cutting arpeggios. Here you can sense a certain kinship with Dry Cleaning, both in the sharp post-punk guitars and in the underlying detached attitude typical of the English band.

Also worth mentioning is a post-punk track whose textures and vocals strongly recall Protomartyr at their most reflective: we're talking about “Conflagration Mindset”. The album closes with “Skywriter's Sigh”: here the guitar takes on a more reverberated tone, while the rhythm section guides the listener toward the end of the journey with a smooth pace reminiscent of the more reflective, melancholic side of Canada's Women.

The trio of Tim Darcy, Ben Stidworthy and Evan Cartwright confirm themselves as one of the sharpest, most cerebral outposts of contemporary indie-rock-post-punk, delivering an album that opts for shadow over blaze. If we really had to point to a limitation, it would be a certain underlying stasis. The Canadian band prefers to chisel its sonic perimeter with millimetric precision rather than give in to freer, more spontaneous impulses, settling into a stylistic template that, over time, could come across as slightly homogeneous.

That said, “Cost Of Living Adjustment” remains a solid album, capturing a mature band in total control of its means, which, incidentally, are far from limited.

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15/06/2026