One of my favourite sites on the web is the brilliant Daytrotter. With a huge library of live sessions that they have recorded over the years you can easily spend whole days or even weeks in there just browsing through and downloading what you like. One such band I’ve come across lately in there and I admit I’d never heard of before, is a band by the name of Cotton Jones. However, After searching the web further I discovered Cotton Jones is Michael Nau and Whitney Mcgraw from the indie pop band Page France who I also discovered split up in 2008 so he could fully concentrate on Cotton Jones. Although paranoid cocoon is Cotton Jones’ debut full length on Suicide squeeze records, they have released a couple of EP’’s when they were called The Cotton Jones Basketride before shortening it for this release. I wonder if Michael Naus favourite animal is a chameleon?
So we have ten tracks of gentle, dreamy, slightly psychedelic pop with some country licks thrown in. Whitneys slightly subdued backing vocals fitting in perfectly alongside Michaels more baritone vocal. I could list a whole load of influenecs you can hear in this record but if you like The doors with a little less trippyniess, Yo la tengo without the fuzziness then you will no doubt like this but as I say there are a whole load of influences in this record. This is no bad thing though as it’s such a beautiful, gentle album that you would be happy waking up to or accompanying your glass of wine after a hard days work. Enjoy.
Cotton Jones sounds almost like a matured Micheal Nau – almost like Page France (although a great band in themselves) was his college band and now he is growing up and becoming an “artist”. I don’t know if that even makes sense, but this isn’t music one makes when still discovering your sound. Definitely a bit psych-folk heard on these tracks.
I wonder if there is as many “faith” references in this album as his PF stuff…