Coco Smith

BIOGRAPHY

Sometimes, the most radical thing you can be is hopeful. The last resort at the end of a difficult journey can very well be the thing that pulls you out. It is something so strong that it almost trumps every struggle that you endured before it. This idea of “triumph, despite” is ever-present throughout Coco Smith’s music. It is fighting to be made clear in her early discography, only to flourish in her newest album, “You Won’t Get My Message but You’ll Hear It.”

So exists “triumph, despite.” A simply-put way to express an almost underdog-like epithet. It doesn’t come around often. This concept runs parallel to Coco’s personal journey through making music. The breakthroughs and “click” moments with the band are rare, but they almost overpower the trials it takes to get to those moments. And music-making is just like that. You have to have a combination of luck and hard work, and more often than not, you will not come out on top. But, this “triumph, despite,” this one moment that seemingly holds so much weight and presence - it’s a defining characteristic of the music.

In fact, it is Coco’s personal belief that folk/rock’s defining characteristic as a genre is “triumph, despite.” It exists within the themes of her influences - Big Thief, Pinegrove, Armlock. Armlock’s “I’m gonna come back with the sword you left behind” is the truly surprising and blunt lyric full-stop she was looking for.

Together, Coco and the album’s band (some original members, some not) tackle what it’s like to feel this hopefulness in a vacuum. If the song is all-the-way hopeful, there is no moment that connects to the listeners. It needs to have teeth; needs to feel like it scratches on the way up to your brain’s receptors. It’s making your family member with a chronic illness laugh, it’s coming home after being away for a while, it’s hearing that the person you are in love with misses you so much.

The songs on “You Won’t Get My Message but You’ll Hear It” are in chronological order. First, in “Distraction,” Coco draws upon feelings of inadequacy, alongside imperfect synths and drones that emphasize her point. Then, in breakout single “Tortious,” Coco utilizes her own experiences of feeling “too much” and juxtaposes it with her father’s chronic illness. The less-dreamy track, “Tides/Stand Up”, provides more of a punch than the first two. It’s like a stream of her consciousness. The flow from “Tortious” to “Tides” depicts a sort of, “well, now that we’re on the topic of my dad, etc etc.” We are peering inside of Coco’s brain; her infamously-jumbled way of telling stories, and her passion for this life. This is the first time you hear harmonies on the album, and they are by her real bandmate and best friend, Isaiah Rowe. You begin to feel a concept, a sense of community. “Jasper” depicts Coco and Isaiah’s duo project. Her want for him to be seen as an artist and not just a drummer is an accurate representation of the entire track. He transitions from singing matter-of-factly to playing soulful piano. This music is as much about Coco as it is about the people who make it with her. “Big, stone fences guard you. Stable, bright red, I’m let in.” A sentence conveying the beauty of being let into this sacred space that they’ve created together. They’ve been through oddly similar struggles. Their fathers had the same chronic illness, they had similar financial situations growing up, and they had a passion for music, which was the only thing they felt comfortable continuing on with while their friends from home became doctors and office workers.

In nearly every song, Coco finishes saying what she wants to say and she lets the instruments speak louder. They were listening to her the whole time, running parallel to her, and then allowed to roam free. She trusts them to, anyway. They know the story, they just have a turn to tell it for themselves. “Multiform” is the title track without being the title of the album, and it is a prime example of that. The second single off of the album, “Multiform” stuns you out of your stupor created by the songs before it. “Eastchester, NY” and “Chug Along” serve their own surprising purposes, drawing influences from S. Carey and then Duster. After “Multiform” has shaken the mold, you are presented with music that struggles to fit into it, only to realize that that’s the point of the mold being shaken. The “triumph, despite” theme serves all of the tracks in separate ways, with an experience for every listener to relate to.

We end off the album with “You Know Everything,” a hopeful lesson in love and grief. It is not a story like the others. There is no chronic illness to find the silver lining in, there is no home and there is no away. There is only this love and this peace within it. “Lesion opening, you kiss my hand, without a care if the blood from the wound would cause you sickness. And you’re sewing it back again, cut the roots of my material, create incision,” Coco sings, only to end off with “you know everything, I study your religion.” It is a bow of the head to the one that you love. Hope is injected here as it is into every track on this record. There is no job of the listener but to identify it and feel it within themselves.