The California band Cold Gawd announced on Saturday, March 5 that they have joined Dais Records. Joining the ranks of Drab Majesty, Ghenesis Breyer P-Orrige and Iceage, Cold Gawd lead by Matt Wainwright is bringing their unique blend of Post-hardcore and shoe-gaze to the Brooklyn & Los Angeles based label. Along with the announcement, Cold Gawd released their newest single ‘Moving to California in March’.
“‘Moving to California in March’ is a song about the anxious feeling that is making— what you think is— the biggest next step of your life. ‘Stay in Chicago?’ ‘Go home?’ You’ll always ask yourself, ‘was that the right move?’ but every day remember why you left.”
– Cold Gawd, Dais Records
This latest announcement is preceded by the band’s 2020 debut, The Creative Pursuits of Me and You. Creative Pursuits journeys through dense crescendos, shimmering guitar meditations and punishing breaks. This is a shoe-gaze record but if you can depart momentarily from Loveless-drenched associations of the genre you will find something evolved in Cold Gawd’s music. This evolution is even more apparent on the group’s record of covers that dropped the following October. Covers 2021 is an exploration of songs from Childish Gambino, Snoh Aalegra, White Lighters and Whirr. The 4 songs on the record are a notable tone shift for Cold Gawd, stripping back heaviness in favor of a broad exploration of the structure of each song. Rather than delivering recognizable copies of tracks, the homages to Childish Gambino and Swedish R&B singer Snoh Aalegra are recontextualized through the shoe-gaze prism of Cold Gawd. The intimate reverb-soaked vocals and so-close-you-could-touch-it acoustic guitar on ‘Flight of the Navigator’ depart from the dense production found on Because the Internet. The last 2 tracks on Covers are by White Lighters (Project of Ex-Nothing guitarist Brandon Setta) and Whirr, two projects with deep California shoe-gaze roots, draw a more perceptible sonic connection between Cold Gawd and its influences. Both Creative Pursuits and Covers serve as, not only a confident artistic statement of Cold Gawd, but the strong foundation from which ‘Moving to California in March’ is building on.
“…I know the music that I like; I’m very sure of myself [and] the music I want to create and put out there and put my name on…”
Matt Wainwright – Cold Gawd, Frontman/Guitarist
Excerpt from an Interview with Frontman Matt Wainwright
In March 2021, 5 months after the release of The Creative Pursuits of Me and You, I sat down for a conversation with frontman/songwriter Matt Wainwright to discuss Cold Gawd’s debut. We discuss the beginnings of the project, Matt’s fascination with the Midwest emo scene in Chicago and a lot more. You can read an excerpt from that interview below.
[17:57]
Those songs for [The Creative Pursuit of Me and You], you said something about the band setting and then the solo setting. Were you feeling liberated from the band setting in creating that or was there a lot of collaboration in the writing process of that record?
“…so there was a few songs, let’s see, ‘Shining Example’ is actually from… So I used to play in a screamo band called Don Quixote and ‘Shining Example’ is an old Don Quixote song that we all collaborated on, and different people from that band have gone on to do different things artistically, and nobody kept that riff, except for me. And so I was like “well fuck it I’ll use it”. We only played it live once. We never recorded it. So that was a band setting, and then the song ‘Get Some Rest’ is an old Kid Teeth song. We were playing that one a lot towards the end of it being a band, it being the two people who were in it . We were playing that song live a lot. That was collaborative in the sense that the person I played with in the band, I was like “do you like this” and [they were] like “yeah”. All of that stuff I wrote myself.
Nice. And then the recording process, what instruments were you playing? I know you play drums.
Everything. Drums, Guitar, Bass, the only thing I didn’t do was was record it which was all thanks to my man Henry from Slow Pulp
Hey! Sick.
I still love the collaborative nature of it. Like I play in another band called Pathos and those are like my three dudes and we can bounce tracks off of each other but I’m like I know the music I like; I’m very sure of myself of the music I want to create and put out there and put my name on it. Now that I have that sort of sense, that I know what I’m doing, I don’t really feel the need to collaborate on it. That’s my approach with Cold Gawd and I’ll still send it out to friends who know me or people who know me or play music themselves and I’m like okay what do you think about this? I think I’ve been pretty honest with my opinions on music over the last however many years I’ve given a shit about music. So I feel like people are pretty honest with me when I ask them. I don’t really get a lot of “oh yeah dude that was cool, aw yeah whatever it was cool”. Even if people like it, I still get a very honest “i like it” opinion not just because “you’re Matt and you’re my friend.”
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