I bought my copy of Louis’ Time on CD at his 2019 solo gig, at Heaven, London. Like Louis I was flying’ solo! Anyway, loved the gig, and listened to the CD on my drive home. Driving out of London, after midnight, with Weird Part Of The Night playing!? Fantastic.
Cole’s music is an interestingly eclectic mix: there are trashy keys sounds: brash, almost rasping, sometimes evoking the disposable riffs of electronic dance music. Thankfully there’s also a nice big dose of raw funk. But it’s also unashamedly pop. Albeit a weirdly maverick kind of pop. And as well as the high energy brash-trash edginess, there’s the balladry, with cloud-banks of soft pillowy ‘pad’ type keys parts.
For me it all adds up to a heady and compelling mix. The album itself kicking off with the anthem to small hours freedoms, In The Weird Part Of The Night. This very upbeat track is followed by the midtempo funk of When You’re Ugly, a kind of sibling loner/loser anthem, pairing very nicely with the opener.
Everytime and Last Time You Went Away are another pair, but this time of spookily sparse synth/vocal ballads. And split up by an intervening quartet of more varied content. From the brief soundscape of More Love Less Hate (which he uses as backing at gigs to a pretty beatnik spoken recitative piece), to his collaboration with Thundercat, Tunnels In The Air.
The last named above is my least favourite track. The midtempo stuttering hip hop vibe of Phone is much better. And Real Life, with guest Brad Mehldau tickling the ivories, one of the albums several more excitable hi-energy numbers, is also much stronger. Freaky Times and Trying Not To Die also partake of the spirit of youthful zestiness that characterises much of the album. The latter, like Real Life, benefitting from a virtuosic jazz piano solo, this time from guest artist Stu Hamm.
Amidst these tracks we also find the wonderfully titled After The Load Is Blown, a soulful downtempo ballad. But Cole has saved the very best till last. Just as the album opens with two of the strongest numbers, so it ends on two of the best: the absolutely sublime Things, and the haunting ultra mellow closer, Night. Louis played both at the more recent big band gig I saw, also placing them in close proximity within the set. And I was transported to a blissful place, high up in the aether.
Whilst Time is not a totally consistently brilliant album, it’s still pretty astonishing. Especially as it’s essentially the work of one still very young man. And the best stuff is off the scale.
Tunnels is the only track I regularly skip, but several others – Things and Night in particular – I’ll often listen to repeatedly. They’re both mesmerising and highly compelling. At his more recent Earth gig (he’s played Heaven and Earth, I like that!) I bought a CD of his earlier Music CD album. I’ve yet to really give it a proper listen. Only the track A Little Bit More Time, from Time, sounds at all like the older stuff, which I’m yet to get to grips with.
But all in all, Time is 14 tracks from a very creative and interesting contemporary young artist. Cole’s work helps restore my faith in humanity, in our rather oppressively hyper-capitalist era of dumbed down to the max wallpaper ersatz muzak. In an age of karaoke opium for the masses, Louis Cole is refreshingly idiosyncratic.
Maybe not for everyone – my wife’s not keen, refusing to accompany me to either gig! – but, for me, essential. Hence five out of five.