Alan Cohen Experience

On Alan Cohen’s website you will find a link called Things.I.Balance. Clicking on that link leads to some pretty impressive pictures of Mr. Cohen stacking various objects on top of each other with the introduction “My superpower is balance and unbalance. Here are some examples of my balance.” It’s a shame his debut solo album, Revolutions, is an example of the latter. On it, he attempts to balance politics with humor but can’t decide whether to be School House Rock or They Might Be Giants and ends up falling somewhere between halfhearted jester and disingenuous folk singer.

The ultimate example of this is the spoken-word biography “Mandela” in which Alan compresses an entire lifetime of achievements into two and a half minutes. This in itself is no problem and actually makes for a good, though slightly gimmicky, song premise. The noble idea is marred, however, by a chorus and bass line that venture into self-parody and a rhyme scheme that sounds severely forced (“Now you must remember at this time/ Apartheid was the systematic rejyme”). This tongue-in-cheek style of characterizing famous historical leaders is extended in “Castro,” which suggests that the Cuban leader and his “mustachio” should go to “Japan or maybe Siam”. With lines like this how are you supposed to take this guy seriously?

There is nothing on this album that hasn’t been done a thousand times over in one setting or another. “Pharoah” sounds like it should be a sing along for Sunday School class while the lead-off track, “Revolutions”, plays out like an Elvis Perkins or, dare I say it, Nick Drake outtake. It is perhaps the only song on the album that embraces its conventionality rather than trying to hide it behind musical flourishes that, in most cases, go nowhere.

This is all a real shame because the freak folk movement could use a guy like Alan – a misfit Luddite writing vaguely baroque pieces that include cello, upright bass, and at times a drum machine. And there are moments on this album that show what Revolutions could have been. “The French Revolution” is a charming song that fits in well with Alan’s yesteryear aesthetic. It still includes the history lesson that he seems to feel should come with nearly every song but, unlike “Mandela”, it doesn’t sound like he’s only reciting events to show off. Instead, he’s created a swing-time ode to the Bourgeoisie with a hint of foreboding in the background viola.

It may be telling that the best song on the album is a cover. “The Trial of General Ludd” finally utilizes a time change that doesn’t feel like you’re being jerked out of bed at 6 in the morning. It is traditional sounding without being tacky and has within it the authenticity of fellow nostalgic strummer M. Ward, something sorely lacking from the rest of the album.

One of the most important aspects Revolutions is lacking is a sense of coherency. None of the songs flow into each other and some of the transitions seem almost intentionally jarring, such as the move from the bass driven “Mandela” to the acoustic freak out “Smog: The Industrial Revolution”. With an album of 10 songs clocking in at under 30 minutes filler should be unacceptable and yet “Outro” merely mixes together all of the previous songs and provides virtually no new material. And while it does sound interesting with headphones on as the songs fade in and out of each other it just seems pointless since we’ve heard them just minutes earlier. Alan Cohen may have fallen short of his message but at least he had one. Maybe he just needs to practice a bit more on his balance.

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