Coco Smith: You Won’t Get My Message but You’ll Hear It and ‘Twomac’

I was only going to review the latest single from Coco Smith, but then two things occurred to me. What if you’ve never heard of her? And if that’s the case, you won’t have heard her superb album, You Won’t Get My Message but You’ll Hear It, either. So how could I not review an album that contains tracks as good as ‘Multiform’ and ‘Chug Along’?

This New York-based singer not only has an angelic voice but a knack for shining a light on the greyer areas of life with nuanced beauty. “Fixture or distraction, your heart’s drunk, it’s plastered,” she sings on opener ‘Distraction’, just one of a plethora of amazing lyrics that litter this record like broken stars. Inadequacy, illness, heartbreak and hope: there are plenty of big themes to get under the skin of in the album’s brief half-hour runtime.

“An angelic voice and a knack for shining a light on the greyer areas of life with nuanced beauty.”
— Marq Sutton, NottsRocks

But it’s also the band who support Coco here, with guitars, piano, organ and subtle drums and bass. The bass in particular gives ‘Multiform’ a leg up that elevates it somewhere special. Incredibly, it was only on about the fourth listen that I noticed the backing vocals on ‘Tides/Stand Up’, hauntingly underpinning Coco. It’s that kind of album, full of layers on every level, just waiting to be uncovered by anyone willing to go on the journey.

And so to latest single ‘Twomac’, a natural continuation of her work. Brushed drums, piano and slightly fuzzy guitar eventually give way to a full-band sound that carries on long after the vocals have stopped. Multilayered and tight, it bursts forth into a crescendo that lifts the listener, pushing ever onwards and upwards until all is calm again. If this is an indication of where her next album is heading, I for one am very excited.