The latest record from House Of Cosy Cushions does not come with a caveat – but if it did, it would probably read something like, “Let the listener beware that in times of deep melancholia, existential crisis or emotional despair, this album will probably make things worse before it makes them better.”
House Of Cosy Cushions are a Dutch-Irish four-piece, helmed by Voorburg-born musician and artist Richard Bolhuis, who have collaborated in the past with Katie Kim and Deaf Joe. Haunt Me Sweetly is their second official release and it is a beautiful but at times indescribably bleak alt. rock creation, its Radiohead-like scuzziness matched with Thom Yorke-esque mournfulness.
A person in the throes of sorrow would surely find solace in a song as sinister and cold as ‘Tigress’ or as all-encompassingly glum as ‘Bleed The Need’; in fact, I’d wager the swooning brass on ‘In The Morning Sun’ or the hushed boy/girl vocal on ‘Green Eyes Blazing’, which borders on horror flick-creepy, is a perfect place to seek sanctuary during a bout of blue funk.
Not that Haunt Me Sweetly is one long, 36-minute doomfest. Bolhuis appears to have sampled a purring cat (possibly the photobombing muggy from the artwork) on ‘Vlieland’, which, unless you’re ailurophobic, is powerfully soothing, while the lively ‘Cut A Rug’ is a complete surprise, throbbing with tribal percussion and wild, Celtic fiddleplay. There’s also a handful of lush moments to balance out the sonic sparsity elsewhere.
‘Outcast Cats’, a noisy number punctuated with spiky strings and grinding guitars, is cleverly followed by the album’s title track, a lilting, lo-fi keening song with little more than a few electronic taps for instrumentation. Indeed, every note and hum on this 13-tracker feels adroitly executed – but its jumbling of moods and styles can sometimes sound a little confused.
Luckily, it all starts to make sense when we get to the final flourish, a pretty, banjo-led piece called ‘I Found A Place’ that puts our forlorn lab rat in a right pickle. If, as I supposed, a heartbroken soul would be plunged even further into gloomy torment by Haunt Me Sweetly’s atmospheric storytelling, a first, fresh taste of optimism right at the last minute might just be strong enough to yank them from their misery. “I feel so light, I’m dark,” Bolhuis croons, in that gentle, lopsided way of his, as if to call attention to his own trick. Few could pull it off as well as this.