"We'll Drive Home Backwards," Coming This August on Minty FreshDownload "Charlotte's On Fire"
"We'll drive home backwards." - That line, spoken by Matthew Broderick in a culminating scene of John Hughes's iconic loveable-slacker comedy Ferris Buehler's Day Off, provides the title for Cocosuma's U.S. debut, "We'll Drive Home Backwards." It's easy to read this reference as a simple homage to a warm-hearted piece of Sunday afternoon popcorn fodder, but there's a bit more to it than that. Something about Ferris' quirky remedy to the massive mileage he and his friends have accumulated on a filched Ferrarri seems to encapsulate the spirit of French-English group Cocosuma's fourth full-length: disarmingly direct, beautifully out-of-step, and charmingly assured of a world where things are exactly as simple as they should be.
After gathering critical and public acclaim with three previous full-lengths in their native France, Cocosuma have managed to reinvent themselves on We'll Drive Home Backwards. Having parted ways with vocalist Kacey after their last album We Were A Trio, Cocosuma found themselves facing the dilemma of finding a new vocalist. Enter Amanda, the wide-eyed London girl who turned that dilemma into a coming-of-age for the young band. Amanda's dreamy, elegant vocals beckon back to the hazy sidestreets of London in the psychedelic '60s, and her smoky tones and freewheeling naivete inspired Michelle and Chad, the bearded boys of Cocosuma, to put aside their treasured electro effects and focus on pure songcraft. The result, We’ll Drive Home, is an opportunity to listen in on that first sparkling conversation between three people whose whole musical lives led up to their meeting.
A listen to lead single "Charlotte's On Fire" offers an unmistakeable glimpse of a group whose love for the best of British pop runs deep. The song thrums with the oscillating, popping bass of early New Order, throwing Cocosuma's allegiance in with with a group of Madchester musicians who chose to jump headlong into dance music and shake their hips in the face of unimaginable tragedy. But Amanda's gauzy blanket of vocals shares more with contemporaries like Air and the Concretes, and everything coils around stabs of '60s psychedelic guitar chords and shooting-star bits of reverb-soaked melody in a way that only Cocosuma could dream up. In the video, the band members individually make their way through a '50s art-house noir, a '60s mod tele-drama, and a mustachioed '70s cop thriller, only to wind up in the same place in three different eras in the end. It's a metaphor for the seamless, carefree collage that the band crafts throughout We'll Drive Home Backwards; Cocosuma sound like they’re playing to each other across decades, and the sounds only grow richer for the distance traveled.
In the past, you might have heard Cocosuma's music emanating from U.S. network television shows and several commercial spots. With the release of their first U.S. album, We'll Drive Home Backwards, they're asking for your full attention, and one listen will ensure that they get it. Though they're still faithful to the brand of star-gazing pop they've spent years crafting, We'll Drive Home Backwards marks a new fruition of their vision. At once self-assured and wide-eyed, wrapped up in the psychedelic past but flashing a coy grin to the present, it's a reinvention that follows with a perfect logic from everything that came before.
To check out the YouTube video for "Charlotte's On Fire"
