AEM036 Benji Cossa

Benji Cossa was once called “The King of Song” by Bjorn Copeland of the Black Dice. Other peo­ple that have been referred to as musi­cal roy­alty include: Elvis Pres­ley, Michael Jack­son, Johnny Cash, not to men­tion Queens Aretha and Lat­i­fah, Ozzy the Prince of Dark­ness, and just plain old Prince–all pop­u­lar artists that achieved mas­sive radio suc­cess. Cossa heard his song played on the radio too. Once. He recalls, “They played ‘April’ on WFMU and I missed it. I didn’t know it would be on, but I turned on the radio and heard my name. It was excit­ing.“Benji Cossa, like many truly great song­writ­ers, doesn’t “write” songs in an active sense of the word. They just seem to spill out by the dozens–on train rides, at work, all the time. It’s remark­able, and it’s gen­uine. That isn’t to say that he doesn’t work hard. He’s a crafts­man, and he’s very seri­ous about his work. The man’s pro­lific, but only a small cult of friends and fans can say that they’ve heard even one of his thou­sands of orig­i­nal compositions.

Cossa’s a com­plex and emo­tional indi­vid­ual, but there’s nev­er­the­less a cer­tain ele­ment of sim­plic­ity that per­vades his music. Well, to call it sim­plic­ity is to sell it a bit short because what we’re really talk­ing about here is inno­cence. There’s more than a lit­tle bit of Daniel John­ston in him, if it’s pos­si­ble to draw the com­par­i­son with­out imply­ing that Cossa’s an acid-casualty-crazy-person (he isn’t). That said, he’s been mak­ing music almost as long as I’ve been alive, and still refers to gui­tar chords by shape: “line” (A major), “tri­an­gle” (D major), “upside down tri­an­gle” (D7), “reg­u­lar” (that’s “G major”), and my per­sonal favorite, “the hard one” (mean­ing “C major”). His instru­ments are often a bit out of tune, and I’d wager that the whole con­cept of musi­cian­ship (you know, pre­ci­sion, sound­ing “good”) that so many song­writ­ers embrace as a crutch is the fur­thest thing from his mind dur­ing the cre­ative process. Actu­ally, Benji Cossa doesn’t really have a cre­ative process; his whole life is a cre­ative process. He just does, and for­tu­nately for us what he does is really phe­nom­e­nal. Part of it’s the voice, that won­der­ful effort­less voice. I once asked him whether a par­tic­u­lar part hap­pened to be sung in falsetto, to which he replied “What’s that?”. Seri­ously. He has no vocal break what­so­ever, and makes use of more octaves than most pianists (Hyper­bole, you say! Lis­ten, I say).

Cossa’s songs are flex­i­ble shells, and trans­late well into a vari­ety of for­mats. Whether it’s his home record­ings (Benji Cossa’s Vault Vol. 2), acoustic pop (Between the Blue and the Green), or rol­lick­ing coun­try rock (Benji Cossa & The Tight­ens), his melodic sense and com­plex world view shine through. His cat­a­log is a ver­i­ta­ble “choose your own adven­ture” album, which made con­struct­ing this 7-inch a blast. What we have here today are some record­ings made at the turn of the mil­len­nium on 4-track tape and 8-track cas­sette machines. But don’t let the lo-fi aes­thetic fool you, Cossa’s not try­ing to fall in with the likes of Iron & Wine or Deven­dra Ban­hart. His influ­ences are more in the direc­tion of ELO and the Doo­bie Broth­ers than any­thing delib­er­ately DIY or folksy sound­ing. And for those who would draw the seem­ingly obvi­ous Bea­t­les par­al­lel inspired by his soar­ing tenor, Cossa would respond with “Bea­t­les? Not that great.” There’s no pre­ten­sion to Cossa’s inci­den­tal appro­pri­a­tion of the lo-fi aesthetic–it’s merely a prod­uct of the tools that he had avail­able to him at the time.

Benji Cossa has a knack for writ­ing beau­ti­ful and catchy pop tunes about some seri­ously heavy themes. A-side “Super­low” is a hook-ridden walk through the guilty pas­tures of someone’s impul­sive sex­ual exploits. It so effec­tively con­jures the grit and depres­sion of an adul­ter­ous encounter that I feel shitty just lis­ten­ing to it. But it pushes even fur­ther into the psy­che, switch­ing voices between some gov­ern­ing sub­con­scious and the per­pe­tra­tors them­selves. The song opens in medias res, and the sub­con­scious voice advises “If so, let your­self go,” to which the per­pe­tra­tor responds with the ratio­nal­iza­tion, “We both need it, and why not? It’ll be our lit­tle secret.” The sub­con­scious voice then returns with the provo­ca­tion, “Go on, go, go, go go go go!” The per­pe­tra­tor, now sexed, reflects, “We set our sights super low, we made our beds and now we’re lying, but it’s not cheat­ing.” Lit­er­ary crit­ics would have a field day with this, as the ensu­ing cacoph­ony brought on by the song’s mul­ti­ple nar­ra­tors allows it to pos­sess a kind of intra­tex­tual dis­course, and con­se­quently assume lay­ers of inter­ac­tive mean­ing that would be oth­er­wise impos­si­ble. In other words, this is some good shit.

“Super­low” was writ­ten in 2000, back when Cossa was liv­ing job­less in a spa­cious apart­ment in the now trendy Williams­burg, Brook­lyn.  After blow­ing through his sav­ings, he took on a job for $6.50 an hour at Pet­land Dis­count and moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neigh­bor­hood where he was promptly mugged at his front door. Find­ing more cock­roaches than neigh­bors, he brought home a Tokay gecko named “Creep­ers” to rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion. His room was barely large enough for a bed and a dresser. It was around this time that Cossa began his love affair with WCBS FM, the New York clas­sic rock (50s-70s) radio sta­tion that played day in and day out at Pet­land. Most (if not all) of Cossa’s music has deep roots in WCBS FM’s top 40 lists. It’s with this mind­set (shitty apart­ment, shitty job, clas­sic rock) that we approach “Life Might Be In Vain.”

Now, from the above descrip­tion you might assume that B-side “Life Might Be In Vain” is about “the artist” and his strug­gle to func­tion within the bounds of a soci­ety that doesn’t fully appre­ci­ate his craft. But, this is where you’d be wrong. It’s actu­ally about zom­bies. A friend hap­pened to be mak­ing a film about a zom­bie inva­sion and asked Cossa to con­tribute to the sound­track. The premise to “Life Might Be In Vain” is this: the main character’s girl­friend has aban­doned him and he laments that with­out her love, he might as well get bit­ten and turn into a zom­bie. Cossa insists that most of his songs, even those with deeply per­sonal themes, are merely his quirky take on humanity’s prob­lems. Only a hand­ful are directly rel­e­vant to his own strug­gles and tri­umphs. “Life Might Be In Vain” has a cer­tain com­fort­able lilt and off-kilter vocal style that might seem oddly famil­iar to those of you who’ve heard Bob Dylan & The Band’s “Base­ment Tapes.” It’s Cossa on every instru­ment here, test­ing the waters in a style and groove that would resur­face in a major way on his Benji Cossa & The Tight­ens record.

Not enough peo­ple lis­ten to Benji Cossa’s music, period. We’re work­ing damn hard, hand in hand with the folks at Seri­ous Busi­ness Records to change this. So go on, go, go, go go, go lis­ten to some Benji Cossa.

Ben Heller

Side A — Superlow Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — Life Might Be In Vain Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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