JUSTIN AND THE COSMICS

COOL DEAD

LOVE POLICE RECORDS + TAPES

I’d actually forgotten I saw Justin & The Cosmics back in 2018, opening for Deer Tick at the Lansdowne Hotel here in Sydney. Once my pre-pandemic memory recall kicked back into gear I remembered how impressive they were that night. Attitude backed up with chops and songs galore. In my review of the gig I described them as having “a bit of New York punk and glam, a healthy serving of Detroit ramalama and a nod to Elvis.” 

Now we get Justin Collins’ new album, the Nashville artist’s first in five years, and it’s a mighty slab of twists and turns, nods to seminal influences, swagger and twang – all wrapped in songs that, after only a couple of listens, sound like a brace of deadset classics from across the decades of rock ’n’ roll.

Opener ‘Woah Is Me’ sounds like Paul Westerberg fronting the Ramones before the single ‘Asshole Eyes’ truly tears a new one with it’s overt Springsteen-isms in the vocal department, as the song tumbles and crashes along in a gloriously disheveled manner – drums overblown and guitars a swingin’. 

By track three it’s clear there’s no recipe or musical them going on here, just uninhibited and primitive rock music in all manner of styles. ‘Are All My Friends Gonna Be Strangers’ is country rock meets Exile On Main Street. ‘Am I Supposed To Care So Much’ is Sinatra and Bowie in Las Vegas as Collins namechecks Michael Jordan, Pj Harvey and Kurt Cobain like a roadside preacher.

‘Super Blue (Real Bad Sad)’ finds a wasted 50s girl group vibe and gleefully mangles it into a dark and ghoulish acid trip nightmare. The punkish country sound returns on the superb ‘Don’t Let Your Hunger Die’, another of those “is this a cover of a hit from yesteryear?” moments. All the ingredients are intact to make it such.

Moody country noir populates ‘Deep Caveman’, pitched somewhere between Elvis, Orbison and Twin Peaks, pop. 51,201, with it’s moody shimmer and twang. That atmosphere continues with closer ‘I Wanna Meet You’, a ghostly cowboy shiver under desert stars. “You’re only there when I think about you, which is all the time” sings Collins. In other hands that might be an endearing line, with Collins’ delivery (a warmer take on Suicide’s Alan Vega) it takes on a creepier aura, in the tradition of the dark torch songs from the underbelly of punk and the damaged side of country. 

Cool Dead is dead cool. An album that never cuts corners or second guesses itself. It’s a pure example of an artist exploring both the obvious and abstract aspects of one’s creative personality.

Chris Familton