Cola Present New Single/Video “Skywriter’s Sigh”

Cola have built their reputation on tasteful minimalism — Tim Darcy’s sprechgesang, Ben Stidworthy’s bass holding the center, Evan Cartwright’s percussion keeping everything in orbit. Cost of Living Adjustment, their third album and the one where things open up, keeps all of that discipline while pushing into something bigger. It’s the most maximalist record they’ve made, and somehow also their most refined. It arrives May 8 on Fire Talk Records.

“Skywriter’s Sigh” is the closing track and, by the press release’s own admission, Cola at their very best. Things sizzle and flicker. The melody leads rather than follows. Darcy’s lyrics stay as precise and poetic as ever — “Please don’t romanticize a better time / They’ll put your cot outside in the rain” — but the vocal sits differently now, on equal footing with every other sound around it rather than above it. The video, directed by Maxwell Farrell, matches the track’s oblique beauty.

The album considers socialism vs. hell, the eerie pangs of nostalgia, and the rolling dice of life — which sounds like a lot, but in Cola’s hands it coheres completely. Everything written separately, brought together in the studio, treated as equally important. Sounds that don’t blur even when they expand. Following earlier singles “Hedgesitting” and “Conflagration Mindset,” this one seals it. Pre-order below, then find a date on the world tour.

Pre-order Cost of Living Adjustment ↗