A rush of sparkling musical revelry is ignited when you press play on Cosmosis. Caned & Able’s third album is a mastery in balance, a perfect orbit. There’s no wonder it was in contention for the 2012 Mercury Prize. To be released sometime in the late autumn of this year, the album is bound to warm the lucky people who pick it up, all through the winter.
The London band recorded the album between the city and coastal Cornwall. The contrast between the charge of the city, and the languid country life is clearly heard in the album, and makes for a broad yet centered album. Caned & Able employ a plethora of genre’s throughout the album, most noticably, rock, trip-hop, country and chillout electro. Though if it had to be pinned to one genre, Cosmosis is a rock album, it’s constantly driving like any good rock album should be. The other genres sit on the other side of the scale, they serve as the pull to the rock feel’s push. ‘Three Of A Kind’ is a prime example of this, introducing itself as a trip-hop track, when the melody enters with bass and voice in unison, you can’t deny it’s ‘rockiness’, so when it drifts away to a rapped verse the feeling lingers, until it’s reinforced by the guitar solo.
The voice in the album, is delivered with a breath that is calm and confident, flanked by a range of processing techniques that bolster it’s delivery. All that supports it is fluidly replacing and reinventing itself throughout the album, though the most engaging instrumental section can be found in the build into epic ‘Trip to Arizona’, focusing around on a minuscule entrancement of a synth line, the bass, drums, guitars and other synths revolve around it creating a harmonic loop that never falters.
The album surrenders itself to it’s true style in it’s final album titled track. A nine minute psychedelic development, it is probably the album’s strongest track. Once you have become enamored with the band, through their use of multi-genre magic, and fallen into some of the album’s ultra-chilled melodies, you are ready for ‘Cosmosis’, which sweeps you out of the atmosphere with the majesty of being the final track and being named after its parent.
Cosmosis is a modern rock masterpiece which provides something for fans of any style, it represents the now, yet it feels timeless.