Noisy dream-pop, loop-pedal enthusiast, Coffee Spit hails from Stafford, Virginia and has created one of the most uniquely written albums that you may ever hear. Based solely on his experiences of drug use, the two-and-a-half-year recovering addict recorded his latest Tired in his bedroom studio. The story set forth is one of addiction, love, loss, regret and pain. In short, it’s a very personal project for the musician. The artist ultimately describes his album as “how true love is the answer to what make life special and the bonds we create with people we love, and the pain of when they go away.” This is Coffee Spit’s fourteenth release.
The first track “memory” opens with warbly vocals and only three lines of lyrics – “Am I only a picture? / All I want to be / is a memory” – although after listening there is clearly much more. The sounds are imaginative and trippy in every way and echoing vocals are heavily used, as are the distortion effects and drums. Overall, the song seems to have no distinct melody and chord change. “soda” seems a bit more lighthearted, but just as trippy. Apparently, it’s a song about soda – not sure what’s in that soda – but something that made the artist “way too drunk to care.” “chair” finally felt like a song with a recognizable progression or format, and in some ways it kind of reminded me of a more pop radio friendly Pixies song. “pill II” reveals some dark lyrics about drug use and what certain pills can do to the mind and one’s consciousness. This tune also has a very trippy, free-form style and now at this point, I’m thinking about The Cure’s Pornography album – that one is super trippy. “hospital” tones things down with a slower paced, shoegaze style song. This tune reveals more with details – “In a bed for passed out corpses / That’s where I’ll be / They throw them all there / For the world to see” suggests a rehab facility. The ending gets creepy and then drops off and breaks into the next. “church” has the feeling of recklessness, nostalgia and sadness – a strange sadness for getting so drunk – “I’m so sorry” – but at the same time – “Fredericksburg was beautiful.” I like this one for its haunting nature and the guitar solo. “keys” is one of the longest songs on the album. A freestyle guitar starts playing, reverberating vocals start up (which I suggest not listening to with headphones turned up, unless you like that sort of thing), and a very sloppy, sludgy drum beat. “sand” switches things up with a fuzzed out melody on guitar, and the standard verse-chorus-verse format. The singer’s lyrics suggest being tormented by dreams inside the memories he keeps. Towards the end, some weird vocal effect can be heard. “flowing” offers spaced out sounds, beats and lyrics that are not decipherable based on the extreme vocal effect. But even so, I liked the song’s message, even though they are quite subjective – “River, river make me smooth / Make me whole, and then unbound / River, river clean the slate / Never found, never found.” “videodrome” is yet another free-form, tripped out tune that was hard to follow, at least for me. The words read like the artist was indeed tripping hard core on something. “starman/jeepster/cosmic (bowie/bolan/coffee)” is three-fold and a whopping 14 some minutes long. Coffee Spit starts off with a classic David Bowie song, from the artist’s masterpiece (well, one of many in my book) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I think Bowie himself would have appreciated this one for its sheer creativity. Next up, is a Marc Bolan tune, the ‘70s English glam-rocker from T. Rex fame. I am not too familiar with some of Bolan’s work, but after giving this a listen, I could hear that swaggering attitude and sex appeal that Bolan was known for in his music (even though Coffee Spit’s version is highly distorted and trippy). The last part of this song sound like a series of whacked out effects from some space invaders video game or some bad acid trip that Captain Kirk went on. The last number is “pill” and features more of that avant-garde, emo-indie trippiness that Coffee Spit has clearly solidified in my head. The words to this one read like he was going through withdrawal in the worst way. He belts out his falsetto for a bit as the song seems to come to close after four minutes, but this one goes to seven. Sounds and textures change back and forth with random singing, talking, free form guitar playing and rather chilling backing vocals. Well, if this is what being tripped out on acid or heavily entrenched in a drug is like, then perhaps I’ve experienced just that on Tired. There are some highly creative moments that made me wonder how Coffee Spit came up with his sounds, but maybe I’ll let the listeners experience that for themselves.
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