Los Angeles musician Eddie Cohn has built a catalog over the years that pulls from 90s grunge and Tom Petty’s Wildflowers-era sparseness in equal measure – Beck’s Sea Change is another touchstone he names, and that record’s quiet devastation is a useful reference point.
“Weight of the World” drops on April 10th, and the recording process played out across multiple cities: drums and bass at Jake Reed’s home studio in Pasadena, acoustic guitar and vocals at Cohn’s own setup, electric guitars from Brett Farkas at his studio, cello from Phil Peterson remotely in Seattle, and mixing and mastering from Kevin Penner in Kauai via Zoom. The song tackles the constant hum of information overload and digital noise – the kind of ambient anxiety that’s become so normalized it barely registers anymore until someone puts it plainly.
The production is deliberately bare – guitar, bass, vocals, drums, with cello added for texture and layered vocal experimentation on top. It’s the kind of restraint that’s harder to pull off than it sounds. The grunge and Petty influences show up not in volume or attitude but in the commitment to letting a song exist without overloading it. There’s room to breathe in here, which is fitting given what the song is actually about. Cohn handles lead and background vocals, acoustic guitar, synth, and percussion himself, and the familiarity of that workflow – he’s been recording with Reed and Sean Hurley on bass for several releases now – gives the track a looseness that feels lived-in rather than labored over.
