Roughly a year ago he released “Stay”, a little acoustic love song in its purest form. Now the same man has just recently dropped an album, his official debut EP full of beautiful gentle sounds on an inspiring level.
This man is Cooper Chasse, an artist originally from Canada and now based in the UK. He hasn’t released a lot of music yet, but the released material already speaks plenty – Cooper Chasse’s musical work is diverse, soft, and with a strong acoustic feel. “Stay” was just him and the guitar, an intimate and simple song feeling love through the word “wonder”. The new EP is a studio release seeing an entire band production behind it, yet still maintaining the simple and cozy feel. Perhaps it’s time to talk about the release now.. : )
The EP, released on the first day of this year, is titled “Four Sides Of A Coin“, and rather fittingly is home to no more or less than four songs. The album carries a prominent breeze of acoustic lively feel as if you’re watching a band perform these songs live. The title track especially feels smooth with the laid-back percussion and swaying backing vocals, while the usage of melodies makes way for a bit more introspective thoughts.
There’s also darkness and crushing emotions in this record, most vividly shown in the heavy slow beat of “Crown of Flies”. There is also light, positivity, and happy melodies to contrast the sadness as if the release tells nothing bad lasts forever. That’s true, and “Cygnet” is a song of reassurance coming loaded with metaphors. The two sides are joined in the last song “Rest & Reset”. The laid-back feel that was present in the title returns, while the lyrics look back to difficult times in the artist’s life.
“The meaning of each song was validated the more the project came together. The EP as a whole speaks a narrative of what one can do in the aftermath of difficult times, that no matter hard things get we will make it through alright and come out with many lessons learned.
The song “Four Sides of a Coin” is about following your gut, pursuing your dreams and not letting others decide your life for you. “Crown of Flies” is about the rite of passage of death and grief, both physical and figurative, especially when fighting depression and anxiety. “Cygnet” uses imagery and metaphors to reassure listeners that things will be okay. And “Rest & Reset” is a stylistic throwback to my previous work on “The Quarantine Demos.” In those demos I wrote about how I was feeling during a rough break-up, and in “Rest & Reset” I reflect back to those dark times. It’s a song about going through a trial by fire and coming out whole. “
“For Sides of a Coin” is a beautiful little EP with a strongly personal feel. The stories told here come all from the artist’s personal life, affected by the pandemic.
“Before “Four Sides of a Coin” was recorded, or even fleshed out, it was meant to be a big step forward from my previous work. I had the setlist ready, I had the pre-productions sketched out, but had no idea how I was going to pull it off. Luckily, my bandmate from another project had a studio space and wanted to utilize it as much as he could, so he agreed to take on the EP as a recording engineer and co-producer. A few days before we were set to record, I tested positive for COVID-19 and we had to push the day for two weeks after which gave me some more time to finalize everything. We recorded everything in 12-hours, adding elements and perfecting things afterward. Early December I had everything ready to go for distribution and decided to set the release date for January 1st to commemorate a new era of my music. “
The EP has plenty for those who wish to connect to the lyrics – they hold a lot of thoughts – and there’s plenty for those who simply seek well-written indie rock songs with strong flavours of folk and Americana.
Don’t forget to support this project and to follow on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, SoundCloud, YouTube, and Spotify. If you enjoy his music and are able to provide monetary support, you might consider downloading it on Bandcamp.
You can obviously find it in the following Playlists: Less Than 1,000 Followers, Indie Only, Chill – Folk – Acoustic, and Missing You….
P.S. If you enjoy discovering new artists and fresh new music you can subscribe to this blog Less Than 1,000 Followers and follow the Playlist with all the artists that we have presented here!!!
This coverage was created via MusoSoup #Sustainablecurator