Hello and welcome back to our series, Three Songs To The Head, where we feature three songs that we love, three songs that are stuck in our dome, three songs we simply feel must be shared with you! This time we’re featuring work by COHO Mountain Stringticklers, Sebastian and the Deep Blue and In Cahoots. Songs that will move you in their own separate ways, songs that are perfect for a sunny day! Enjoy!

I’d never heard of COHO Mountain Stringticklers until my friend sent me their link a few days ago. Since, I’ve listened to their song Ghosts In This Ghost Town more than a dozen times. It begins with a simple acoustic guitar and a beautiful male harmony. “There’s no need to be frightful of the ones we put in the ground, but these ghosts in your bible are the ghosts in this ghost town. Honey, your bible is starting to float around. I thought that I might go, but I’m just happy to be around!” With that a feint kick drum makes itself known and my heart is warm. Word has it, COHO is a new band out of Seattle University. And they surely have something lasting. At about the 2-minute mark of Ghosts, their “Wooahh-oohh-ohhh” is about as catchy as any bit of any song one could imagine. The song finishes, “In chasing down the banners of your kin, I’m one of them, I’m one of these men. Amen. And break me down and brush me off again, I’m one of them, I’m one of these men. Amen.”

We’ve written about Sebastian and the Deep Blue before. But this is the first music video of theirs we’ve been privy to. The thing is hilarious, simple, well-edited, visually catching. The song itself is soulful, playful and thoughtful. The production of the entire product is something I want to, and will, take in over and over. The video features a handful of folks prancing through the streets with the superimposed over-large, grinning faces of singers Barry Sebastian and Emily Vilbrandt. Legs flailing, bodies jumping, creeping, slinking. “I keep talking myself down. Dead in the water, just too much to bear!” sings the duo. The electric guitars are something out of 70’s funk, and the accompanying violin and horn section pulses. “It’s easy for my head to get stuck on the climb. Tick-tock, tick-tock, there’s just never enough time. I shouldn’t be this way, though I feel that I must. Constant pushing, constant pulling, constant worry, constant lust!” It’s as if the piece could be a short on the cartoon series Adult Swim, one of my all-time favorite series.

In Cahoots’ lead singer Christina Cramer’s voice is reminiscent of 80’s rock. At least, all that is good about it. Put simply, her voice wails. The first song on their most recent EP, Boxed Wine Country, has her singing over hard-hitting bass and drums and a distorted electric guitar rhythms. There is an edge to her voice one doesn’t often hear, especially in the more pervasive indie compositions of today. “Waking up, hope and pray and beg, babe yea, that you’re still here. Waking up, praying to the Lord that you’re still here! We can blame the whiskey, that’s what it is for!” The sonic level of this tune has you running 100 mph high up in the Rockies, or something. And you’re only pushed harder by the guitar solo at the 1:45-mark. If you want more of this style then get ready to enjoy their latest collection.

-Jake Uitti, Managing Editor, The Monarch Review