We're Just Getting Started
And we're here for musicians who are just getting started too. At Early Work Records, bands at the outset of their careers can find resources, feedback, publicity, and maybe even representation -- but for now, we're helping raise awareness about all the amazing music you've never heard.
Why We Focus on Reviews
Reviews are crucial for bands and musicians early in their careers. Coverage helps increase audience awareness and provides material for bands' press kits, which can be used to garner attention from labels and booking agents at venues. Most importantly, though, reviews encourage bands to continue making music because it confirms their music is listened to, considered, and taken seriously.
Our Latest Review
Coco Koop
"Try"
Lush and accomplished dream pop.
Coco Koop’s Try is a set of expertly demure dream pop full of sophistication and skill. Absent are any tricks or gimmicks – no squall of reverb or fuzzy distortion, no jangling delay or electronic blips. Instead, we hear straight-ahead rhythms and humble synthesizers working their magic the old-fashioned way: good songwriting and intentional instrumentation. Focusing on restraint and mood, Coco Koop builds its songs layer by layer until its impact has somehow snuck up on you, stolen you away, and left you somewhere you didn’t expect.
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Try doesn’t reveal a scope of vision so much as it showcases a mastery of one. This is dream pop through and through. Layered synths and drifting guitars create a downy expanse for the singer’s feathery vocals, which sit admirably alongside the genre giants like Beach House and Chromatics. While there’s a bit of variation from song to song (“Try” pushes the tempo, while “the Seeker” leans into programmed percussion a las elder statesmen Depeche Mode or Tears for Fears), the throughline is a blissfully introspective mood made possible by the minor keys and lush soundscapes.
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Another easily overlooked aspect to this music is its dynamic reach. The instruments are balanced and the tempos steady throughout. Without succumbing to pummeling drums or overwhelming guitars like much of the current shoegaze revival, Coco Koop still manages to write songs that evolve and resolve, using melodic juxtaposition and discord to develop tension.
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While dream pop offers avenues toward earworms and melody, Coco Koop’s approach of steady, sturdy mood-building proves equally successful. Lush and lovely from start to finish, Try is a memorable encapsulation of artists working in a mode they make work for them.
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