Thomas Cohen - Bloom Forever

Pitchfork 79

In spring 2012, Thomas Cohen appeared on the cover of trashy celebrity rag Hello alongside his pregnant fiancée, Peaches Geldof, daughter of the Boomtown Rats frontman and Live Aid founder Bob. Domestic bliss was a lens twist for Geldof, who until then had been a notorious indie socialite—imagine Paris Hilton rewritten by Diablo Cody. And even more so for Cohen: A year earlier, he had been fronting serious post-punk teens S.C.U.M., who were named for Valerie Solanas' manifesto, and cited the likes of avant-garde Japanese band Les Rallizes Dénudés, Pharoah Sanders, and Throbbing Gristle as influences. They signed to Mute, and were feted by Brian Eno and Portishead. You can't buy that kind of credibility—or sustain it once you're pictured next to a photo splash of Prince William and Kate Middleton's "night of glamor and tears."

This wasn't how things were meant to go. S.C.U.M. split, presumably as a result of Cohen's new celebrity life, and he decided to pursue a solo career, writing about the strangeness of being a young father of two in a British rock dynasty. But the script wrinkled again when Geldof was found dead at 25, the result of a fatal heroin overdose. After a few understandably lost months, Cohen got back to writing, and finished his record, which unfolds in chronological order. All things considered, Bloom Forever (the middle names of their second son, Phaedra) is unexpectedly upbeat: a '70s singer/songwriter record indebted to Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Elton John, and Lou Reed's Berlin.

Mostly recorded in Iceland, the arrangements are at once utterly relaxed yet over-the-top. (If you can't temper a story of being widowed at 23 with a little absurdity, when can you?) But like Cardinal's Eric Matthews, Cohen strikes a fine balance between sweet wooziness and cathartic guitar/saxophone/flute soloing. Where Bloom Forever could easily—and justifiably—have been dark and oppressive, instead, it's filled with inviting warmth and light, and sharpened by Cohen's reedy, Byronesque tone.

In contrast to the music's opulent wallowing, Cohen's plainspoken lyrics initially evoke the closed idyll of a new, young family unit. "As the rivers make their beds, our love will be holding onto each other," he vows in opener "Honeymoon," where smoky, drifting guitar and languid sax ride to a storming climax. On the title track, about Phaedra's birth, he evokes their "lonely weather," new parenthood's sweet and tiring fug. "Let's find a place to hide/One where we'll never sigh," he sings, over loose guitar that recalls the relaxed stateliness of Nick Cave's Push the Sky Away. It's a really lovely space to spend time in—so much so that it's hard to begrudge him "Hazy Shades," a sunny and shameless rip-off of America's "A Horse With No Name" coupled with the lyrics to Neil Young's "Love and Only Love."

Traces of that Americana lilt make it into "Country Home," the one song on Bloom Forever that deals most directly with Geldof's death. Although the lyrics are brutal ("My love had gone, she'd turned so cold/Why weren't her eyes covered and closed?"), it's remarkably measured, cascading on waves of pedal steel and vocal harmonies. Cohen has obviously had to grow up incredibly fast, but even so, the sophistication of the writing, and his resolve within those songs, is pretty extraordinary. His children give him reason to keep going on "Ain't Gonna Be No Rain," and the rollicking sea shanty feel (and flute solo!) of "New Morning Comes” evokes the "sun still shining on, even though it's cold."

"Only Us" is a cavernous, Pink Floyd-indebted piano lament for the intimacy the couple once shared, but on "Mother Mary," Cohen promises to keep everything he's lost inside of him. "I will hold onto the part of me that is in love with you," he sings softly, as graceful as the silvery strings and gentle piano. Without warning, his voice expands, and the song storms to another never-ending crescendo, buzzing and burning like a rocket burning off layers as it breaches the atmosphere. The blurry quality that characterized the record's first half is gone, the focus sharper; the end of a very strange dream. Cohen will never be able to escape the context surrounding Bloom Forever, but he refuses to let himself be defined by tragedy. His bold, distinctive debut album stands a million miles from the celebrity circus, and will endure far longer than mawkish titillation.

The Quietus 0

Love, loss and grief are themes that have fuelled singer-songwriters' inspiration since their very early history. Lovelorn verses and difficult lives have always made great storylines; musicians delving into their inner selves to find something to chew over and then spit out in their songs. In this respect, Thomas Cohen is no exception, forming as they do the main drive behind his solo debut. Though he “would hate for somebody to listen to the record and just think about [him],” it’s very difficult to separate Bloom Forever’s narrative from the biography of its creator.

Cohen’s story is tragic and fascinating, and removing that context entirely from the album would be a mistake –– just as an even bigger mistake would be to only focus on the names of the people involved. “What’s in a name?” someone asked some 419 years ago. And here we are now: We don’t need to know who the characters are, only what happened to them, and Bloom Forever — written between 2012 and 2015, with a chronologically ordered tracklist — isn’t a million miles away from memoir. A journey through three years in the life of a young man getting married, having his second child, and then having to face the tragic passing of his wife (all before turning 25) on a path from mourning to a sort of acceptance, written by someone aiming to be what Roland Barthes called a Scriptor, rather than an Author.

Cohen, giving space to his interest in knowing people’s reactions and feeling towards his music, let go of his songwriting during the recordings, having his fellow musicians improvise on elements of the tunes he made them listen to. A distance that allowed Bloom Forever to sound like a desire for rebirth, when it could have easily been a descent to hell, not far from what Neil Young achieved with On the Beach –– a big unspoken reference of the album.

Phased bottleneck guitars, Rhodes pianos, basses and synths lay a solid foundation, each instrument perfectly balanced with the other, though keeping a distinguishable part in the harmony, giving the songs a layered and complex structure never overdone or taken too far as Cohen croons on top. The album’s ballads put the American folk and blues tradition seamlessly in connection with British artists like Scott Walker, Elton John and David Bowie –– the sensual sax solo of the opening ‘Honeymoon,’ for instance, or the Mike Garson-ish piano in ‘Only Us’.

Where the lyrics turn darker, the melody comes in lighter. In ‘New Morning Comes,’ for example: “Will you be there and hold my hand as the sea becomes a storm?/ When the light shines through the window as a new morning comes” sings Cohen, before letting a mid tempo, electric piano solo burst with energy, turning the desperate plea into a resolution for a new awakening. Even in tracks like ‘Country Home,’ the turning point of the plot, or ‘Mother Mary,’ where the highest distress is reached, the light opening of the backing vocal and the gentle strumming of the guitar help soften the mood, never allowing despair to take hold but not forfeiting emotional impact.

And this is what Bloom Forever holds, even in its title: the blossom of a songwriter ready to open up to the light. A prompt to a better life.

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