Down the Cole Hole
By Des Burkinshaw
The oldest trope in the book – no new music is good music.
We can easily bring The Beatles into that debate. Sixty-plus years on from Love Me Do and their place in the wider musical canon is assured. From an academic point of view, and even divorced from their original context, that reputation is still increasing.
Back in 1964, when they took America by storm, they were not so welcome. Bing Crosby once famously said, “I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the 20th century that has made great strides in reverse.”
I’m 57. I love everything from classical to EDM, Music Hall and the early New Orleans jazz pioneered by Louis Armstrong, to the big hits of the rock and pop era, hip-hop and the avant-garde. Subjectively, I’ve heard things as good as The Beatles, but, also subjectively, nothing honestly better.
Despite my catholic tastes, if pushed, at 50 I would probably have given you the same Top 10 of favourite artists with little change from the list I had at 20. My eclecticism was hidden in the rotation of artists filling the final 90 slots in my top 100 list.
Last year, that top 10 finally changed. I caught a bit of Glastonbury on the BBC. Some young idiot in a skeleton costume was playing some kind of funk with a mini-big band. We turned it off and skipped through other acts, but these were mostly people dancing to backing tracks played in from laptops. We decided to go back to the skeleton man.
My daughter and I got into it after a bit. We decided to look him up on YouTube and…
Oh. My. Gosh.
It’s been a life-changing year for me. One year ago I knew nothing of Louis Cole and the gifted and quirky musicians in his orbit. Now he’s the gift that keeps on giving. Sam Wilkes, Genevieve Artadi, Knower, Clown Core, Thundercat, Jacob Mann, Snarky Puppy, Sam Gendel, Dave Binney, Pedro Martins, Flying Lotus, Rai Thistlethwayte, Paul Cornish, Adam Ratner, Thom Gill, MonoNeon, Chiquita Magic, Jules Buckley, the Metropole Orkest, Fuensanta - all Cole collaborators and now household names – at least, they are in our house of three. I’d say 50% of this year’s listening has come from exploring this body of work.
As I dug around, it turned out I had heard of him before - but had simply taken no notice - when he worked with some of my other favourite contemporary musicians, like Jacob Collier, Vulfpeck, Cory Wong and DOMi and JD Beck.
So who is this man in the skeleton suit and why has he had such an impact on me?
I’ll get to that, after a short diversion.
Humour is important to me in music. The Beatles certainly contributed to that. But so did the Pythons and the Rutles in a more literal way.
And what about Zappa? “Watch out where the huskies go and don’t you eat that yellow snow.” Or Dylan’s early stuff like I Shall be Free No. 10. Or the wit of Tom Waits. At one point he was “colder than a well-digger’s ass”, and on Rain Dogs had a character who was “independent as a hog on ice.” Witty and compelling imagery.
And, of course, I love the earlier masters, such as Sammy Cahn, Irving Berlin, Noel Coward and the biggest of giants, Cole Porter. “Baby, if I’m the bottom then you’re the top” (My gran was really vexed when I put that one into a gay context for her). Later, I loved 80s/90s indie acts like the Dubious Brothers and Pulp for similar reasons.
But, surprisingly, there’s little of this in today’s pop – everyone’s too busy telling us about their broken hearts or explaining their hedonistic/materialistic tendencies to bother spicing things up with the picaresque or vignettes. My daughter, as early as 13, said, “Why don’t the new writers do anything as weird as Strawberry Fields Forever? They only sing about their boyfriends and how great they are.” That is, truthfully, a variation on the trope that opened this piece. But in the interests of research, I picked this week’s top 10 to check the truth.
Chase and Status are number one with Stormzy. Backbone is a rant about “pussy emcees” and how great Stormzy is. Meh.
Chappell Roan’s Good Luck Babe at number 2 is shaming an ex-girlfriend who now sleeps with boys. Billie Eilish is at number 3 with a paean to a lost love, Birds of a Feather. Guess by Charli XCX (also featuring Billie Eilish) is at number 4 - another slagging off song. Not quite sure who is being dissed here - people on social media, male fans, or an ex-boyfriend? I can’t tell. “You wanna guess the color of my underwear, You wanna know what I got going on down there.” She is letting us know who’s in charge though. At number 5 we have Kisses by BL3SS. “Back to mine, only 5, Then we can go all night”.
So far, so diary-entry-posing-as-lyric.
The rest of the top 10, Austin by DASHA, Die With a Smile by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, Kehlani by Jordan Adetunji, Apple by Charli XCX and Hot to Go by Chappell Roan, all cover similar lyrical territory. I went through them all for you but feel free to check them out yourself via the attached links.
There is no sign of the surreal or the oblique, nothing of Edwardian poetry in the lyrics - where you wrote about a bird singing on a fence but were really talking about the existential threat to innocence caused by World War 1 or whatever.
And a lot of it is oddly angry. Love me, you bitch, or else. I’m a pop star don’t you know.
To be clear, I’ve been talking about lyrics. I like some of the actual records. Bruno Mars is a generational talent and Billie Eilish has been one of my favourite artists for a few years, but my daughter’s original comments were only about lyrics.
The first Louis track I came across online was When You’re Ugly. Chorus lyrics: “When you’re sexy, people wanna talk to you. When you’re ugly, no-one wants to talk to you. When you’re ugly, there is something you can do, called fuck the World and be real cool.”
As daft a song as I ever heard, but the audio and its cheap (but hilarious) video can’t help but make you smile. Perhaps that’s not the profoundest of lyrics, but it’s given more weight by the other major line in the song, “We all live on Planet Earth and this is how it works.”
Well, that’s absolutely true, isn’t it?
During lockdown I discovered a novelty YouTube act, Clown Core, consisting of two insanely talented musicians locked in a portaloo, playing super-fast death metal with easy listening interludes such as Earth, Toilet and Hell. It reminded me of my second favourite band of all time, Cardiacs. I had no idea then the two musicians in Clown Core were Louis Cole and Sam Gendel. But Clown Core wasn’t meant to be taken seriously and so I didn’t. I never looked into them again until that post-Glasto, Cole-inspired, musical treasure hunt. We saw Clown Core at a packed O2 Forum Kentish Town show last November. It was as frenetic and crazy as you’d expect from the videos.
Louis has released many collaborations, but his major works comes under four main headings: Clown Core, solo, as half of Knower with Genevieve Artadi, and solo again, but working with open-minded conductor, Jules Buckley, and the Metropole Orkest.
The thing I have always loved most about The Beatles was their rapid evolution from small R’n’B outfit to sonic visionaries. Their ethos became: anything goes and everything counts.
If you’re looking for a contemporary artist who genuinely encompasses this ethos, look no further than Louis. You won’t like it all, but you probably don’t like Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da either.
The earlier solo works and Knower albums contain tight funk and jazz elements done with a great sense of humour. Often, Louis was the only musician on the tracks. On others, he called in the people listed at the top of this piece, everyone seemingly as virtuoso as he is. He eschews major studios in favour of home recording.
His fourth solo album, Quality over Opinion, was nominated for Best Alternative Album Grammy. It’s great and admittedly contains some tracks that sound filler to me, but more than offset by gems like Dead Inside Shuffle, I’m Tight and the first glorious version of Let it Happen (hold on though – incredibly, an even better version is coming in a few ticks).
But the album that blew my mind in 2023 was Knower Forever, the duo’s fifth album.
Louis and Genevieve are YouTube natives but also, experts. They made 6 cheap videos at Louis’ mum’s house in Highland Park, LA, and I’ve seen all 6 more than 10x each. In some ways, it’s better to consume these songs through the video than streaming or playing on vinyl - though once you’re in love, vinyl is the way to go. They’re cheap videos, but full of glorious silliness in the editing, and – most astonishingly – all recorded live. Louis is playing drums in the hall, Genevieve is singing on the stairs, the band are crammed into a tiny space upstairs, the brass are in a room downstairs, the strings in the living room, a choir on the driveway.
The songs are witty and surreal, with a funk energy that is truly life-affirming. Watch Sam Wilkes on bass, technically gifted, but also possessed of the best Bass Face I’ve ever seen. He enjoys every damn note he plays. Jacob Mann is quiet but concentrating on playing his Juno 106 synth, set to a fizzy, Rhodes-like patch. His chord-work is subtle and jazzy. My favourite Knower song is Crash the Car, which Jacob finishes with an unresolved chord that makes me want to fly to Highland Park and make him resolve it, right now, godammit. But in reality, it’s a perfect way to end a song about hope and determination to be true to one’s artistic self – the journey is never over, the ending always open-ended.
Aside from Louis’ writing/arranging skills and technically world-class drumming, Knower’s secret weapon is co-writer and vocalist, Genevieve Artadi. Her own solo albums are completely different to Knower’s, but also come with a jazz and psychedelic pop slant. There is also a soupçon of French electronica and bands like Stereolab in her work. Check out this beauty, I Know, from Gen’s 2023 album Forever, Forever. And please: Genevieve. Next time I come to LA can I visit that treetop studio?
I’m so glad Gen and Louis, both so adventurous and modern, also took inspiration from giants like Stevie Wonder, the Beach Boys and, yes, of course, The Beatles. Gen says We Can Work it Out had a big impact on her. It’s a simple band recording, yes, but the verse and the chorus are completely different from each other. The Beatles still teaching their peers in 2024.
Her voice is fragile but beautifully controlled, with seemingly perfect pitch, and is so well-deployed that she has had me in tears a few times this year, especially in the aforementioned Crash the Car.
If you listen to that track cold right now, you’ll wonder what made me cry. But after 20 listens you’ll probably be crying with me, because who cannot resonate with the idea that she - and all the other artists performing with her - were “born to be doing this”? The lyrics and cheap video speak of the same-old story: no major record label would ever “waste money” on shit like this. Before this album was released, Louis and Genevieve put out a social media message begging people to buy the album rather than stream it as they were all broke. It sold out immediately and some of us are still waiting for that vinyl repress to be announced. Ahem.
Some of this album’s tracks – Do Hot Girls Like Chords?, It’s All Nothing Until It’s Everything, and the mighty, I’m the President – have given me more joy in the past year than anything else I’ve listened to in the past 10.
One tip, whatever you listen to Knower on, listen loud.
And so, here we are in summer 2024 and the story just got a new chapter. Two weeks ago, on August 18, Louis dropped yet another record, Nothing, featuring many of the same musicians, as well as Jules Buckley and the Metropole Orkest.
The first couple of videos he drip-fed for this project, These Dreams are Killing Me, Life and Things Will Fall Apart, showed the funk/band/orchestra’s work off as beautiful singles. They did not prepare me for what came next, the title track, Nothing.
The fabulously ill-labelled Nothing is, on the contrary, absolutely something. It reminds me of Morricone’s Deborah’s Theme from Once Upon a Time in America and others have compared it to Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma Variations. It’s an instrumental orchestral piece, mostly strings, no electrics, and I just crumbled listening to it. More tears. But why? I don’t know, this guy just knows how to move me.
Next track I heard was the remake of Let it Happen. My daughter will confirm that I was choking up 20 seconds into the intro. I’ve heard it 20 times in the past month, and it has instantly became one of my favourite records of all time. Many of the tunes mentioned above became earworms, but this song is truly special. An anthem, once again philosophising. “Everything will be, let it happen.” Over and over again, like Louis was saying, “You have to listen to me on this - everything will be ok.”
We were due to see Louis and Gen as Knower in London, and were getting the Eurostar to Amsterdam in October to see this album performed live. I love it so much, I think I might even have considered taking out a loan to fly to the States to see it if that had been the only option. However, both gigs have been postponed until 2025 due to Louis’ ill-health. I’m no doctor, but am not surprised. With such a huge output in the past 3 years, and the physical dangers of drumming, perhaps this was inevitable. Get well soon.
I’ve loved Cardiacs since I first saw them perform Tarred and Feathered on The Tube in 1988. They were the ultimate band that divided people in those tribal times. I had friends poke me and shout at me about how shit they were, but I only ever saw their wit, surreal qualities, energy and breathtaking arrangements. And that’s why they’ve sat at number 2 in my all-time favourite artist list since at least 1987. No prizes for guessing who has been number one since I was a child.
Number two. Until now.
I’ve got no choice: Louis and friends, you’ve jumped the entire queue, straight in at number 2. You are brave, you look to the future as well as the past, and you embolden and illuminate the present. You have an ethos that speaks of adventure, fearlessness, and dedication to your art. I’m a blessed and happy man, yet you have repeatedly touched in me, the hurt at the core of every life lived long enough.
You’re just so damn good.
Keep on crashing that car, Gen and Louis. And Louis…it’s all far from Nothing. Hope you enjoy being neighbours with the Beatles in my all-time favourites list.
Notes:
I’ve put links in the piece above, but this won’t be the best way to experience the world of Louis Cole and Genevieve Artadi.
Here’s a 10 song playlist I created on Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7KI6PbxP2YfGPuJnNPOdZX?si=971d2a02e9174e9b
Here’s a list of videos and the order you should try and watch them in. It’s not chronological, but it is curated for best effect.
I’m the President - Knower
These Dreams are Killing Me – Louis Cole with Jules Buckley and the Metropole Orkest
When You’re Ugly – Louis Cole and Genevieve Artadi
F*** it Up – Louis Cole
Crash the Car - Knower
Let it Happen (Orchestral Version) - Louis Cole with Jules Buckley and the Metropole Orkest
Overtime – Knower
Hell – Clown Core
Nowhere to Go – Genevieve Artadi
Things Will Fall Apart - Louis Cole with Jules Buckley and the Metropole Orkest
It’s All Nothing Until It’s Everything - Knower
Nothing - Louis Cole with Jules Buckley and the Metropole Orkest
And for the encore:
Tesla – Vulfpeck with Louis Cole on drums live at Red Rocks
I’m Tight – Louis Cole
Ladies and Gentlemen…Good night!
Drum Solo – Louis Cole