As if fronting super hyped garage rockers the Fresh & Onlys wasn’t enough, or being the one man in one man weirdo black metal horde AmocomA, or playing in Black Fiction and Three Leafs or any of a number of other local bands, or even being the back up band for psych rock legend Rodriguez, well, apparently none of that is enough, as here’s a brand new full length from Mr. Tim Cohen, he of all the above mentioned rockness.
Seems Tim Cohen’s a busy man these days, with the Fresh & Onlys last LP barely dying down to a simmer and an upcoming release impending on Woodsist; hey why not throw in a solo album as well? The Two Sides of Tim Cohen strays far from the work Cohen’s been doing lately with Fresh & Onlys, mixing a strong slice of loner psych into the haunted mysticism that permeated his previous work in Black Fiction. There are bursts of pop that peek through the rain soaked windows of Cohen’s songwriting, occasionally letting a little light into his bittersweet temperament, but for the most part the album burns a slow path through the minor key. As a result it doesn’t clinch on the first listen, or even the second, instead Two Sides reveals itself to be a slow grower over repeated listens. Each new layer peeled back from Cohen’s exterior reveals another marbled tear, another queasy calmness that echoes not only Tim’s past, but your own as well. Piece by piece the album pounds, stitches and tapes back together the human psyche only to offer it up to the hounds that tore it apart in the first place.
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