Cold Court – Backslang
Cold Court–the rising Philadelphia-based band of siblings/co-songwriters/producers Mini Serrano (she/her) and Jojo Lavina-Maldonado (he/him)–today released their bracing and combustive new single “Backslang,” their latest previewing their anticipated debut EP \ (^_^) / (aka HANDS UP) due out June 19th.
“‘Backslang’ is this indirect conversation between me and Jojo. We had been arguing about which of us should sing it. I felt he should since he would whenever we played the song live but seemingly out of nowhere he asked me to ‘feel it out’ instead,” Mini explains. “I wrote the lyrics kinda mocking him as part of this argument to see if he’d notice. He didn’t. I love this song because it captures the way we work together really accurately–we’re super emo and take a lot from each other and put each other through a lot.”
Cold Court are set to play three headlining June EP release shows, including an early show at NYC’s Night Club 101 on June 16th.
It’s tempting to say that you’ve never heard music quite like what Cold Court is doing on the \ (^_^) / EP, but that’s not quite right. You’ve probably heard a lot of music that sounds like this. You just haven’t heard it all at once: sideways rhythms, approximations of salsa, peg-legged shuffles, grungy little garage rock riffs, organ runs from the feathered-hair era, The Mars Volta, proggy one-hit wonders Focus, Death Grips, glitchy Aphex Twin filters, radio emo, splashy jazz drums à la Elvin Jones, uncomfortable time signatures, dubstep-style rhythmic interventions. And that’s just in the first song.
Since making their debut in the DIY scene as no-wave noisemakers, Cold Court developed a remarkably idiosyncratic style that flaunts its influences and demolishes even the most open-minded listener’s hierarchies of taste. Think Bitches Brew shouldn’t be within a hundred miles of Justice? Think again. \ (^_^) / can feel a bit like tumbling through your internet service provider’s coaxial cable, an overwhelming spree of information and input that’s held together by tight, compact energy and the siblings’ confidence in their own taste.
This approach makes HANDS UP feel hyperkinetic, as if it’s just sprung from a compact enclosure. Their precision and intensity have made them one of Philadelphia’s most exciting young bands and landed them opening slots with musically likeminded bands such as black midi, Geese, and Deerhoof. Their willingness to follow their own weird impulses was nurtured by the bands they were seeing when Jojo left their New Jersey home to go to college at Drexel University in Philadelphia. They went to house shows and saw bands with unusual instrumentation, people with weird hair and fucked-up clothes. “It changed my life, the way that it was a place that you could be yourself–you could be anything,” reflects Mini. “We knew as long as we fully show up as ourselves, we know that people will get into it. We had a violinist; we had a percussion player; we had a synth player and saxophonist.”
While their sound has evolved since those heady early days, Cold Court’s ethos centers around setting expectations of who they are and what they might do, then defying them. Maybe it has something to do with identity and the ways some might assume a band with two people of color–including a trans singer in Mini–should sound. But it has more to do with their artistic identity and the ways in which growing up in the 21st century, with the entirety of music history ready to be absorbed, can shape the taste and personality of anyone curious enough to lose themselves within it from an early age. You enter HANDS UP thinking Cold Court are a prog-influenced noise band; you leave it thinking they might have a Top 40 hit in them. What matters to Jojo and Mini is that they’re both of these things and much more all at once.
Cold Court Live Dates:
06/16 – New York – Night Club 101 (Early Show)
06/17 – Washington – Songbyrd
06/23 – Boston – Middle East Upstairs
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