The Cocktails

(Carrot Top)
by Chris Adams

It’s Sunday afternoon. You’re broke, as usual. Even worse, it’s raining. You’ve been sitting in the kitchen for hours, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and staring at the water streaming down the windowpane. You’ve got the laundry going in the other room, the phone hasn’t rung all day, and you can’t stop thinking. How’d you end up here? Where did you think you were going? What are you gonna do? What happened to her? What’s this music playing in my head?

Of course, there’re no answers to any of these questions – except, now, the last one. The blue melancholy sounds floating forlornly through your mind are none other than The Cocktails debut. Sadness and longing explode in shimmering azure droplets off every note of their guitars. Plain voices sing simple melodies tinged with a heartbreaking sleepy despair. You don’t play this album so much as let it seep from your stereo with an almost impossible wistfulness. You’re an adult, though, you can handle it – you don’t actually break down in sobs until the violins come in.

Others bands have explored this realm – Luna and Acetone spring to mind – but none so completely as The Cocktails. In their world, it never stops raining. And, some days, you just don’t want an umbrella.