Chris Cohen embraces the power of community on ‘Paint a Room’ – Matter News

When Chris Cohen first started making solo records, he was coming off a period of deep collaboration and ready to experience what he might be capable of on his own.

“Before that, I was in a band called Cryptacize, which was a very intense collaboration with my partner at the time,” Cohen said by phone in late October. “But if I remember correctly – it’s been like 14 years – I think it was wanting to be completely on my own and to not even have to talk to anyone about what I was doing. At the time I was sort of talked out, and I wanted to do something that didn’t involve communicating with other people at all.”

In more recent years, though, Cohen has softened this stance, with his most recent solo album, Paint a Room, arriving in concert with longtime friends and bandmates Davin Givhan (bass guitar), Josh da Costa (drums) and Jay Israelson (keyboards). After completing initial demos, Cohen and Co. took the new material on the road – something he had done with his previous groups, including Deerhoof, but had not yet applied to his solo ventures.

“That [solitude] was great for a time, and then maybe it became too comfortable, and I wanted to push myself and find new ground to cover,” said Cohen, who will visit Ace of Cups for a show on Thursday, Oct. 31. “And, honestly, I felt a little lonely, too. … I wanted to have more people around so that I didn’t get quite so in my head about it.”

This communal spirit is further reflected in the songwriting, which takes a more outward look compared with Cohen’s self-titled 2019 album, an intensely self-reflective turn on which the musician wrangled with his upbringing, his conflicted relationship with his father, and the forces that have long compelled him toward creating. In going through that process, Cohen said he began to realize that many of the things that first led him to make music had remained intact, including the desire for connection and a need to remain in communion with the larger world. “You want to share a bit of yourself with people and have them know who you are,” he said. “And it’s also a way to find out who other people are, too.”

Having gone through that exercise, Paint a Room finds Cohen casting his eyes upon the larger world, beginning with the album opening “Damage,” a lush, organic turn on which the singer and songwriter confronts the specter of state violence. Cohen traced the roots of the song to a deeper personal awakening that occurred early in 2020, motivated in part by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the resurgent Black live matter movement given rise in the aftermath.

“I was trying to educate myself about how our state functions and how power is structured in the world we live in. … I’m a straight, white cis man, and I realized the state has always been all about protecting me, and how that comes at a cost, especially to people who are not like me,” said Cohen, whose convictions evolved as he immersed himself more deeply in abolitionist literature, progressing him toward a belief that the state and its associated forces – the military, police, and the prison industrial complex included – are aimed not at protecting the populace but rather in guarding capital. “Musically, I had the chords and the melody … and I started to ask myself, ‘What is the thing I want to say most right now?’ And I guess what I wanted to say is that the state is not there to keep us safe. And that we have to keep each other safe.”

These are ideas that have continued to evolve in time that passed since Cohen first drafted the song, and especially in the last year as the musician joined the world in watching a genocide unfold against Palestinians in Gaza, fueled by U.S. weapons and the implicit support of those in power. At times, Cohen said, the unrelenting nature of the violence being waged has led him to question the value of pursuing music in this moment.

“Oftentimes I feel insane doing what we’re doing. On one hand, everybody needs music, and I clearly do believe that music makes a difference, and it is essential, and it keeps us healthy,” he said. “But on the other hand, I sometimes feel ridiculous being out here posting on Instagram about the bullshit that I’m doing when we’re murdering an entire race of people – and when we’re doing that in lots of places. It’s embarrassing to be part of this empire. And I want to see it come down.”

The conflicted nature of Cohen’s chosen profession can leave him feeling a sense of whiplash at times, the musician describing how the sense of promise he felt in writing “Damage” momentarily curdled amid the realization that any Spotify streams of the song would only further enrich the company’s CEO, Daniel Ek, and enable him to further “invest in Israel.”

“It can feel pretty hopeless at times,” Cohen sighed.

Inevitably, though, Cohen returns to the idea that music has a unique power to breed empathy, and this empathy can in time move people to bring about the type of change he would like to see in the world. On Paint a Room, these ideas resonate with the most force on “Sunever,” a tender, big-hearted tune that Cohen wrote as a means of uplifting a trans child in his life, and which serves as a welcome balm to the incessant, ugly anti-trans rhetoric that has come to define this political season, particularly in Ohio. “Now as childhood ends/Take a message to my friend,” Cohen sings atop a backdrop of jaunty art-folk. “You’re going to find a way.”

“I still feel very lucky and very happy to play music. And that in this country, in some places, people are still able to get out and see shows,” said Cohen, who was reminded of the fragility of this enterprise during a recent tour stop in Asheville, which is still reeling from the devastating aftereffects of Hurricane Helene. “Music really can and should increase empathy between people. And it can do so many other things, too, depending on how it’s used. Music is essential, and in the times when people can’t make music, it just keeps coming back. People keep finding a way to make music.”