Tim Cohen - You Are Still Here

 

You Are Still Here is not a bad name for a record. Everyone who reads this is I assume still here. It's not a bad thing to remind yourself of on occasion and Tim Cohen also of Bay Area's The Fresh & Onlys is here to encourage us to do so.

I was very fond of Cohen's 2017 album Luck Man. I listened to it a lot at the time, and it resonated with me in its small quiet way. He's put out another since, which I missed out on for one reason or another and now he's back again, because he clearly has a need to express something which The Fresh & Onlys will not allow him to, and I'm personally glad he does.

For You Are Still Here is not just a good name for a record, it is also a good record. Cohen has a quietly spoken modesty but assured insistence about his delivery which I find affecting here as I did on Luck Man. In some ways he comes across as an everyman, but a damned talented one.

Cohen has always played with 'Western' motifs, both musicaly and lyrically on his records. Both with The Fresh & Onlys and on his solo records. He does so again here. The idea of a frontier, what it takes to be a good man. Big Lebowski stuff.  Meanwhile the guitar strings twang and reverberate as appropriate. It's all quietly affecting stuff.

There will many higher profile albums than this one this year. There will be many that will get much, much more attention. But You Are Still Here has a quiet but powerful appeal that I am sure I'll return to again across the coming months. Tim Cohen is the quiet but strong man deceptively fast on the draw, who you will want on your posse when it comes to the final shootdown.