MP3: The Widest Smiling Faces – Lazy Boy
MP3: The Widest Smiling Faces – Asherah
The Widest Smiling Faces is the work of Aviv Cohn, a Brooklyn-based artist striving to “elicit sensations of musical imagery and color” to the listener. He has been drumming up quite a bit of exposure lately, especially after a recent performance on WBAI alongside Lou Reed and Titus Andronicus.
Cohn’s lush sound features trickling acoustics and swift piano melodies, swaying gently like the backdrop to an animated painting, though one with either swaying green trees and gentle winds or a serene starry night. His compositions have a patient beauty to them, with the minimal instrumental accompaniments sounding apt against Cohn’s hushed vocals, a cross between the gentle creakiness of Cat Stevens and the brooding sentimentality of Elliott Smith.
His new album, Me and My Ribcage, is available in its entirey for free on Bandcamp. One of its highlights, “Lazy Boy”, has a haunting key progression, playfully intimate enough to highlight Cohn’s simple musings of fate: “Love won’t save me / Blood won’t save me / God won’t save me.” “Little Death” is led by stirring, multiple guitar progressions and a whirring effect, like shoegaze stripped of studio production and slowed-down to an extreme. Cohn mentions shoegaze as an influence, along with baroque rhythms and ambient music.
This will sound even better on rainy days, but it’s soothing all the time. Download Me and My Ribcage now.
