COLA

BIO

C.O.L.A. is sort of a self-titled album. It’s an acronym for Cost of Living Adjustment, a fitting conceptual framework for the band’s third record. Why? Because C.O.L.A. considers, among other things, socialism vs. hell. It considers: rolling the dice of life. The eerie and sweet pangs that nostalgia can provoke. This is not new territory for band members Tim Darcy, Evan Cartwright, and Ben Stidworthy. It is, in Cartwright’s words “a deepening of what we’ve been doing.” C.O.L.A. is an intricate, beautiful, and sometimes strange record. It is the band’s most refined offering. A perfection of carefully honed aesthetic impulses.

Cola, as a band, says Darcy is defined by its “tasteful minimalism.” A deep appreciation for making music that is romantic, subtle, and deceptively intense. C.O.L.A., however, is the band’s most maximalist work to date. This is a little tongue and cheek (“We were so worried,” says Cartwright, “About all the songs on this record being too different”). In practice, this maximalism means that a song like “Hedgesitting,” has both live drums and a sample drum loop. “Hedgesitting,” is a gorgeous, lush song. It’s like a deconstructed, chopped & screwed b-side from the Cure’s Disintegration. It’s also a little indebted to Sarah Records. “When you were young,” Darcy sings at the song’s start, “you came to make it.”

C.O.L.A., like everything written by the band, is inherently collaborative. The band writes everything separately, then comes together and works in the studio. Look again to “Hedgesetting,” to see this in action, which started out with chords that Darcy had sent, then the band expanded it together, with Stidworthy remixing it right before heading to the studio. This division of labor works intuitively. It is a part of the band’s DNA to say, take an arrangement Stidworthy wrote, and then have Darcy and Cartwright build upon it. Take “Favoured Over the Ride,” as anexample. “I wanted to create a dusky, melancholy palette for Tim to write lyrics for,” says Stidworthy. The song starts with a lonely, dreamy guitar riff. Then there’s a crisp line of bass and it all comes into focus: “What’s on the ceiling that’s caught your gaze?” sings Darcy. It’s a moment of clarity on a record that is interested abstraction. C.O.L.A. is full of these clarifying moments: where a whole swirl of feelings become so clear that it almost hurts a little bit.

One of the goals with C.O.L.A. was to have the melody guide the lyrics. This is a distinct shift from the sprechgesang that has been an anchor for many of Darcy’s earlier records. Here, the vocal melodies are on the same level as all of the other melodies on the record. But the lyrics are no less poetic, no less precise than anything Darcy has written before (“It’s not,” he jokes, “like we’re making a Cocteau Twins song.”) The result is a record that is ruthlessly aware of all of its parts, and treats them all as equally important. C.O.L.A. is a record that speaks to itself: where all of its parts are in direct conversation with each other. Sounds do not blur, even when they are expansive. It is abstract, oblique, sometimes strange, whatever you want to call it. But it is also beautiful, in the classic sense. Beautiful like a painting can be beautiful. Really, really gorgeous. Almost chiseled in the way it plays so deliberately with experimentation. On “Skywriter’s Sigh,” for example, things sizzle and flicker. It touches on the sublime. It is Cola, the band, at their very best.

Cola - Cost of Living Adjustment

from $13.99

Cost of Living Adjustment is the sort-of self-titled album from Cola, the Montreal trio of Tim Darcy (vocals/guitar), Ben Stidworthy (bass), and Evan Cartwright (percussion). C.O.L.A. — an acronym for Cost of Living Adjustment — is a fitting conceptual framework for the band's third record. Why? Because C.O.L.A. considers, among other things, socialism vs. hell. It considers: rolling the dice of life. The erie and sweet pangs that nostalgia can provoke. Following two studio LPs which earned the trio praise from Rolling Stone (Best Indie Rock Albums of 2024), Pitchfork (Best Rock Albums of 2024), Stereogum (Best Songs of 2022) and more, Cost of Living Adjustment is abstract, oblique, sometimes strange, whatever you want to call it. But it is also beautiful, in the classic sense. Beautiful like a painting can be beautiful. It touches on the sublime. It is Cola, the band, at their very best.

THIS ITEM IS A PRE-ORDER SHIPPING ON OR AROUND MAY 8, 2026
DELUXE EDITION LIMITED TO 200 UNITS
SIGNED EDITION LIMITED TO 100 UNITS

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Cola - The Gloss

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The Gloss is the second album from Cola. From their inception Cola have expanded on the d.i.y. ethic of the Dischord and SST eras, creating potent sounds from a minimal palette of drums/bass/guitar and lacing their songs with winsome one-liners and societal commentary. What’s another word for commentary? Gloss, apparently. Never basic, the lyrics reward repeated listening for deeper meanings. David Berman’s poetry-via-garage light pennings are an inspiration, as equally so are the lighter side of UK first-wave New Wave and the Dunedin sound. The results are in the pudding: at times sparse and poetic, at others a thrilling, hook-laden good time, as with the cheeky romantic sketch of a one-night stand that is so overflowing with innuendo-cum-journalism talk that it almost teeters over into self-parody. But the results are the right combination of lightheartedness and sincerity. Romanticism is never far from laughter, and equally never far from righteous anger in the music of Cola: “Pulling quotes now in the dark/Our outlook is restrained/Your tongue might weaken to be-fit your smile/Til nothing ill remains.” ‘nuff said. It's an album bursting with energy and wit and ideas–filled to the margins. Out June 14th 2024 on Fire Talk.

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Cola - Bitter Melon

$13.99

“Bitter Melon” is a new zine housing a flexi single of the same name by Fire Talk recording artist Cola. Flip the pages to reveal a new world, symbols both modern and ancient, just a taste of what’s to come. “Bitter Melon” creates a trance-like atmosphere of repetition and lingering, falling in and out of form. With roots in Montreal, Cola was formed by ex-Ought members Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy, and Evan Cartwright who had played with U.S. Girls and the Weather Station, among others. From their inception, they brought together the spartan d.i.y. ethic of Dischord or SST working punks with an ear toward the modern.

*Very Limited (less thann 50) of these remain, one time pressing.

Cola - Deep in View

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Deep in View is the debut album from former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) alongside Evan Cartwright (drums). Titled after philosopher Alan Watts’ anthology of the same name, the record is built on a foundation of elegant guitar grooves and knotty rhythms, offering commentary on modern life and technology through curious lyrical vignettes, where quotidian objects and scenes are never just as they seem. Deep In View is equally a product of introspective songwriting as it is a consideration of the abstract landmarks of an increasingly media-mediated society. It also presents the most concise and melodic songs Darcy and Stidworthy have written to date.. The album sounds streamlined and intentional, as the rhythms of the punchy and exuberant guitar parts, urgent basslines, and unexpected drum patterns all tangle with each other in an elegant dance. At the center of all these elements is Darcy, whose characteristically wry voice shifts from detached to decisive to distressed, throughout the album’s course. Both enigmatically dense in meaning but precisely intricate in sound, Deep in View is an album that sparks novel interpretations with every listen, like an art object that takes on new shape with each angle from which you hold it.

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