The Cords - The Cords (2025)
Artist: The Cords
Author: Sarah
Date: 12/04/2025
Listen: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
Initially, I had kinda just written this one off as Just Another Slumberland Album: a breezy jangle pop album with all the typical influences that ends up totally forgettable. But in the weeks after its release, I've been coming back to it, and it's starting to be more of a standout for me. It's still not an instant classic for me, but at the very least it's on par with the Jeanines debut album.
The main thing that's keeping my attention on this album is that the vocal kind of sticks out among all the other bands of their ilk; to me indiepop singers tend to have voices that sound small, maybe a bit pinched? But even when the Cords are playing similar songs with similar melodies, Eva's voice feels like it's more open, if that makes sense? (It probably doesn't, I have no idea how to describe voices.) As a result of that, even though the songs all tend to blend together into one for me, I'm still getting bits and pieces of this album stuck in my head (just don't ask me which songs they're from!) I'm a bit too ambivalent about jangle pop in general to totally buy into the hype like all the other indiepop fans I know, but I'm still fairly optimistic about where they might go next!