Along with Dev Hynes and Rory Atwell, Sam Mehran formed the beloved and short-lived Test Icicles, a band that found success with their only album, 2005’s “For Screening Purposes Only.” Long ago, on the old version of this blog, I wrote about the band’s “Circle. Square. Triangle.” an incredible song written by all three members of the band. After the band broke up, Hynes, Atwell, and Mehran did their own things—Hynes famously with Lightspeed Champion, Blood Orange, and under his own name, Atwell formed a few bands and now produces records, and Mehran went on to create a universe of aliases and fake bands, releasing album after album of warped, engaging loops, synth experiments, bright guitar instrumentals, degraded pop songs, dark ambient, and indescribable sound sculptures. Matrix Metals, Outer Limits Recordings, Wingdings, Blues Runner—and there were even more. Mehran was an incredible talent, capable of so much, restlessly creative and imaginative.
After Mehran died in July 2018, his family and friends compiled an album’s worth of the hundred-plus tracks that he’d been working on at the time of his death. All the songs on “Cold Brew” are presented in their original forms, without any additional production. It’s a fantastic album of instrumental power pop, and it’s a great example of Mehran’s remarkable ability to make engrossing and catchy music.
“CLASHY,” the first track on the album, sets the tone: bright, antic guitars and synths, wild and varied percussion, and big hooks. “CLASHY” shows the kind of melodic tension that exists in all the songs on the album—Mehran never lets a hook exist unbothered in a song, he’s always poking at it, shifting it, breaking it down.
One of the many highlights on the album is “XYLO,” a brief track that shows up halfway through. Distorted guitars, drums, and keyboards, simple components that Mehran turns into a gorgeous, super-kinetic jam. “XYLO” made me think that the closest comparison for “Cold Brew” might be something like an instrumental version of Exploding Hearts’ “Guitar Romantic,” or maybe a more relaxed version of Ratatat.
It doesn’t feel fair or right to say that “Cold Brew” is a fitting end or encapsulation of Mehran’s work, because that’s just a shitty way to think about someone’s life. This album, like so many of Mehran’s albums, is a work of great artistry and personal expression, full of idiosyncratic music that couldn’t have been made by anyone else. It’s a fun listen and it definitely deserves attention.