Cope & Drag releases new single

Since first forming in 2005, Cope & Drag has remained a defiantly off-centre act in indie rock’s darker, grittier margins. Taking cues from the likes of Cindy Lee, Broncho, Brittany Howard and Unknown Mortal Orchestra, the project has been forging a world that feels both run-down and romantic, equal parts smoke-filled dive bar and mystic séance.

Tagging their style with self-penned labels like “Jangle Core,” “Indie Noir” and “Louche Wave,” Cope & Drag are building their own crooked mythology, one fuzz-drenched sermon at a time. The catalogue reads like a list of poetic taunts, with albums like Dope & Skag, Beginning of an All Time Low and Old God New Devil, each release a stepping stone deeper into their dislocated universe, captured via an original expression of grit, wit and strangeness.

With their latest single titled “Heaven Vs Halo,” Cope & Drag deliver a track that walks a path between reverence and ridicule. Written in the quiet of Vavuniya, a remote village in northern Sri Lanka, the song wrestles with mortality in the most Cope & Drag way possible, with elements of dark humour and slow-burning intensity. It’s a reflection on death that never forgets the absurdity of the living, delivered with slack-jawed poetry and a knowing wink.

“Heaven Vs Halo” gently simmers with a blur of minimal instrumentation and stark arrangement, recorded with the band in a shed tucked away on an apple farm in the Adelaide Hills. The rustic setting seeps through the sound; brittle, intimate and oddly spiritual, but the lyrical bite remains razor sharp. The song arrives like a whispered confession from someone who’s lived a dozen lives and regrets at least half of them.

Set up by the soft shimmer of airy instrumental textures, the twang of guitar rhythms and dusty patter of drums kick start the arrangement which flows into a breezy indie scene of bright plucks and gentle rhythmic sway. With rich vocal leads gliding above spinning smooth melodic leads, the band serves up an engaging jam that’s quirky, catchy and highly unique all at once.

“Heaven Vs Halo” might be a meditation on death, but it hums with life, it’s dishevelled, confrontational and brutally honest. It’s another chapter in a discography that’s able to look ugly truths in the eye and set them to a swaggering, off-kilter beat. Once again offering a superb showcase of their compelling songwriting and performance panache, with “Heaven Vs Halo,” Cope & Drag continue going from strength to strength on their stellar musical adventure.

Listen to Heaven Vs Halo below

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