Justin Collins
Rock ’n’ roll lifers and staples of the East Side underground Justin and the Cosmics have been grinding it out for years, honing their glammy, grungy, thoughtful fuzz to a keen edge. With their new LP Cool Dead — out Friday via frontman Justin Collins’ Cosmic Thug Records with a release celebration Saturday at beloved dive Fran’s Eastside — they’ve arrived at a sound that is as familiar and welcoming as it is weird and out-there. Cool Dead comes across like the Taoist maxim, “He understands that the universe is forever out of control,” translated through vacuum tubes and ribbon mics, with Collins playing the role of dive-bar philosopher and sideshow barker.
“Shit, they’re all fucking slow burns with me, man,” Collins tells the Scene. “I never really set out to make a record, you know?”
It has been five years since Perf, The Cosmics’ third album, which was recorded live at Memphis’ legendary Ardent Studios. The delay isn’t on the scale of Chinese Democracy, but it does seem like a yawning chasm for an artist who is so present in everything he does, and a performer who is out here doing his thing all the damn time.
“I feel like I’m always writing and working on stuff,” says Collins. “But actually, like, culminating and making it real is always … I loathe it. I almost dread the process of it. The emotional process for me always is so draining. I hang on to things a lot before I finally process ’em and make ’em real, I guess. … It always haunts me. When you put anything out, that shit’s forever. So if I can’t live with it long enough to know that every lyric and every word is OK with me to let go of, I ain’t putting it out. [Laughs]”
Letting his songs steep gives Collins’ calculated, clear-eyed songcraft a foundation to grow into something as wild and free-ranging as it needs to be. The man knows his way around a rock ’n’ roll song, and can channel classic rocker vibes with aplomb. This lets his lyrical engagement of contemporary slang and hilariously crass observation — which you’ll hear in Cool Dead songs “Born AF” and “Asshole Eyes,” respectively — elevate the songs beyond nostalgia and novelty.
The sound stretches across decades, making a strong argument that a love affair with spring reverb and tube distortion is fundamental to the human condition. Recorded at Creative Workshop, the studio owned by Nashville legend Buzz Cason and operated by his son Parker, Cool Dead channels the ghosts of bygone eras, evoking a lineage of 20th century music stretching back to the Eisenhower era. But it also crackles with irreverence and anarchic weirdness, feeling thoroughly of the moment.
“[The studio has] been there forever, and it’s got amazing gear,” Collins says. “And it’s extra special because [Cason’s] son is running it, and he’s super efficient in there. We tracked it all in basically two days. It was just me, my brother and Adam Landry and Robbie Crowell — the four of us went in there and did it.”
Collins’ brother is Scott Collins, who along with wife Kim Collins makes up rock duo The Smoking Flowers. Crowell, Landry and Justin Collins had worked together on records by Diamond Rugs, the supergroup whose members include Deer Tick’s John MacCauley and Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin. Collins contributed the song “Totally Lonely” to Diamond Rugs’ self-titled 2012 debut; it’s a Bizarro World Roy Orbison cut that has a propensity to sneak into your subconscious and stay there. Same goes for the title track from The Cosmics’ debut 2008 LP Hangin’ Out in My Body, which also got recorded on Perf; the song has maintained a claim on the last functioning neurons in my noggin since the Obama administration.
“It was great to work with Robbie and Adam on [Cool Dead],” Collins says. “We had taken a little bit of a break from making records with each other for a while. This one — I just knew that I needed them. They just think like me, and we operate on the same level, and we were able to crank it out, you know, without having to think too much about it.”
The way Collins slides his vocals around a chord like a trombonist strapped to a Tilt-a-Whirl on album opener “Woah Is Me,” the way Crowell tumbles through the Moby Dick-sized drum fills on “Am I Supposed to Care So Much,” the shuffle-chug of “Dirtbike” — they all add up to a rock record powered by the tension between the singer and his most feral instincts, the product of a truce called just long enough to get the songs on tape. The payoff is a batch of songs that feel lovingly lived-in.
“I think this is definitely the truest record I’ve ever made. Maybe because of the patience. … I feel like I’ve always been kinda one of those people that preaches, ‘If you’re not living a real life, or doing real things and being a real human, then your art’s probably gonna suffer,’ you know?”
