Ought Break Up, Members Form New Band Cola

Ought Break Up, Members Form New Band Cola

Ought are no more. Today, the Montreal post-punk band announced that they have broken up. “We are no longer active as a band,” they wrote in a statement on their Instagram, continuing:

When we started Ought in 2012 we had no greater aspirations than to play and write music together, and the fact that we were able to tour the world to such an extent and share so many rooms with so many of you has meant the world to us. We send lots of gratitude and love to all those we met and worked with along the way.

Ought released three full-length albums — 2014’s More Than Any Other Day, 2015’s Sun Coming Down and 2018’s Room Inside The World. Its lead vocalist Tim Darcy also released a solo album while the band was still together.

Good news for fans of the late Ought is that Darcy and Ought bassist Ben Stidworthy have a new project called Cola, which they started alongside US Girls drummer Evan Cartwright. And today they’re releasing their first-ever single, “Blank Curtain.” Darcy’s deadpan voice is still front-and-center, as is some architectural guitar work. Listen to it below.

Here’s Cola on the new track:

What started as stripped-down open D songwriting with a CR-78 soon became a full album and new band. We wanted to see how far we could stretch our compositions with just drums, one guitar, one bass, and one voice.

Blank Curtain is a quarter note kick drum pushing 240 bpm, a drone-like chord progression, and declarative vocals cutting through the haze. If you could invert the color of the Blank Curtain, you might have something like a Chicago house track that sounds like a band in a room.

“Blank Curtain” is out now via Fire Talk Records. Cola will play their first live show at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn on 11/16. Details here.

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