Jackie Cohen - Zagg [CD]

Zagg is the debut full-length album by Jackie Cohen and the follow-up to her two introductory EPs released last year, Tacoma Night Terror Parts 1 & 2, which were called "utterly spellbinding" (The Line of Best Fit), "a stunning and complete debut" (Vinyl Me, Please), and "sleazy-listening glam" (The Guardian). The playing on Zagg – by Cohen with the Spacebomb House Band – and production – by Jonathan Rado (Foxygen) and Matthew E. White with freak-of-nature orchestral arrangements by Trey Pollard – is bright and beautiful across the whole grab-bag of love songs, laments, self-mortifications, meditations on sunscreen, hammer-anvil jams, and kit v. kit double drum cardio smash-bros looney tunes suicide pursuits. More than one of Jackie’s many nicknames, “Zagg" is also a shout out to her uncanny ability to select an unanticipated word or musical flourish, her disarming poetic acumen, her ability to zoom in and out at lightning speed and spin a phrase into a mantra, or the opposite of a mantra. Each song on this record is its own unique little world, keeping a listener delightfully off-kilter throughout the entire affair. Here’s the record. Listen hard. Read the signs. Pack a lunch. Enjoy.