Formed from the ashes of legendary post-punks Ought, Canadian three-piece Cola are simultaneously more restrained and harder to define than their predecessors. On the one hand, you have bassist Ben Stidworthy and drummer Evan Cartwright’s (formerly of U.S. Girls) uniquely singular rhythm section. The linearity and minimalism of their playing is slightly disorientating, as if concealing an underlying tension that is never far from breaking their trademark restraint. On the other, there is vocalist Tim Darcy’s nervously earnest, almost professional delivery of lyrics that verge on the obscure. All of this is rounded out with a guitar sound that pierces through the metronomic background, always unpredictable but never far from a conventionally satisfying cadence.
The Montreal trio have been perfecting this sound since forming in November 2021, and now have three LPs under their belt. On 2022’s Deep in View and 2024’s The Gloss they demonstrated a minimalism that was far more than the sum of its parts. However, with their new album, this year’s semi-self-titled Cost of Living Adjustment, they have produced a noticeably fuller and more intricate sound. This is partially thanks to Valentin Ignat at Studio Mixart and Harris Newman, who recorded and mastered the album such that it sounds lush and ornamented while still in-keeping with the group’s clinical, architectural racket. It is a fantastic album, and surely one of the best of the year.
Cola arrive at The Garage in Islington tonight nearly halfway through their European tour, and they are clearly a well-oiled machine at this point. Proceedings start with two standout tunes from the new album. First is ‘Fainting Spells’, a slinky, rhythmically unsettled track that bursts out into a swirling chorus where Darcy assesses apartment listings online (“spare room / no chaise lounge / carpet / now”). Then we have the album’s fantastic final song ‘Skywriter’s Sigh’, where Darcy’s crunchy guitar meanders atop Stidworthy and Cartwright’s fast-paced, motorik pulse. Though Cola’s lyric sheet never reveals its hand entirely, this track crystallises the intent of the new album in just a few brilliant lines: “I took out a loan to watch the night sky / I needed inspiration from the inverse of what I knew”. This is followed by the immediately memorable observation that “a celestial event is worth a season of rent”.
Though I can wax lyrical about Cola’s unplaceable style, it is worth noting that they have always had a pristine pop tune in their locker. Indeed, each of their albums seems to have one of these – no more no less – to flesh out the track list (see The Gloss’ ‘Pulling Quotes’ and Cost of Living Adjustment’s ‘Favoured Over the Ride’). The next song of the night is ‘At Pace’, perhaps the catchiest of this oeuvre, and it’s an immediate crowd-pleaser that receives the biggest cheer of the night so far.
Soon after, ‘Much of a Muchness’ provides one of the best choruses of the night, a hypnotic and entrancing turn from a stuttering, charismatic verse. Darcy amusingly suggests that we might be more on board with this tune because the crowd’s English-ness aligns with the song’s title. I would counter, however, that the song is good enough to render our nationality as a crowd mostly irrelevant.
Alongside the more established and newer material, Cola sprinkle the setlist with a few lesser-known tracks to mix things up. ‘Albatross’, in particular, has a brilliantly tuneful guitar refrain that bridges verse to chorus. In general, one of the band’s biggest strengths is knowing how to balance the more challenging and dissonant passages with a satisfyingly resolving melody, a trick that keeps you coming back to a song even if you aren’t taken on your first listen. ‘Mendicant’, a 2025 single-only release (AKA their deepest cut) translates surprisingly well to a live setting, especially since the recorded version features Uilleann pipes that aren’t present tonight. Soon after, the peculiar ‘Pallor Tricks’ is fidgety and ferocious.
Then, as Darcy briefly tunes his guitar, Cartwright gets into a repetitive krautrock influenced drum pattern that signals the start of ‘Blank Curtain’, Cola’s first single and still one of their best songs. The guitar, written originally by Stidworthy, circulates around three chords, none of which settle completely and are on constant rotation through the whole track. The lyrics are mysterious and philosophical, as Darcy confronts the feeling of being stuck in a life-narrative and experiencing an identity transition as he gets older: “Is there a notion to explain the mirror to the wall?”.
His vocal delivery harkens back to his time in Ought, and reminds me of their definitive masterpiece ‘Beautiful Blue Sky’. It is a difficult to pin down and intriguing song, and one of their finest statements as a band.
Another highlight is ‘Third Double’, played towards the end of the set. In the chorus, the guitar becomes unusually hazy for the band, and in its final section it explodes into a euphoric passage of noise that engulfs the entire soundscape. It is one of very few moments when Cola let their restraint go, and it is all the more effective for its rarity.
After a few more pop-centric tunes, including the quietly beautiful ‘Keys Down If You Stay’, the band round things out with ‘Haveluck Country’, a bouncy and controlled song that reflects on good fortune and the people that are granted it. The staccato guitars in the verse eventually give way to a dreamy chorus, as Darcy ruminates: “What if it was all a dream? / Vivid luck”.
The lyrics are once again inflected with a kind of existential cultural criticism, depressive in its anti-capitalism but also radically hopeful in their mysterious allusions to a different future. Indeed, Darcy has spoken about how his position as a musician allows him more time to reflect on this than most people: “When you enter a space of liminality, of being between things, it changes your way of thinking. It’s a way to get out of the habituations of capitalism and the society we live in, and helps you think about potentialities that maybe feel far off right now”.
A band of few words, they leave the stage without comment, and the audience files out into the cold wintery night. There are very few acts that are as modern, incisive, and beguiling as Cola right now – their music and lyrics speak to an anxious generation, stuck in repetitive cycles and eager for something to break it. Their show at The Garage was a well-balanced and consistently engaging display of a thoroughly excellent back catalogue
Conor Lang
