Pink is the Colour of Unconditional Love

Gabriella Cohen recorded her sophomore album inside a remote Victoria farmhouse, but its spirit is somewhere on Sunset Boulevard. Full of hazy textures and psychedelic twists, *Unconditional Love* feels like a joyride through rock\'s history books: There are electric flickers of The Doors (“Music Machine”), Blondie-esque ethereality (“Hi Fidelity”), and Loretta Lynn’s elastic howl (“Morning Light,” which left-turns beautifully into bossa nova). The Melbourne singer’s rich imagination keeps these songs from feeling derivative or predictable. On the heartbreak lullaby “Miserable Baby,” she switches between doo-wop exuberance and surf-rock gloom, adding a teasing layer of mystery to the lyrics underneath: “You called from L.A./I forgot how to say, ‘Oh please stay.’”

Pink Is The Colour has materialised as an expansive and exciting body of work, showcasing Cohen’s unusually refreshing twists on pop arrangements. ‘Baby’ was born in the graveyard of unrequited love, while ‘Music Machine’ became a swagger of sultry defiance set in LA. Throughout the new album Cohen (flanked by a choir of imaginary dolls that exist in her head) creates complex and sugary backing vocals. These signature vocal arrangements—contoured with classic harmonies and nostalgic melodies—form songs remarkable in their originality. In the new album Cohen pays homage to her musical influences by inviting the listener on a journey: from the grooves of bossa nova, to the lilting sentimentality of strings, to kicking it back on the sprawling highways of rock’n’roll. Honest heartache is woven into glory throughout the record, and during eleven tracks a candid, almost ethereal self-portrait of its songwriter emerges. For Gabriella Cohen, it’s an epitaph of electric wonder, and a definitive fact: Pink is the Colour of Unconditional Love.

The Brisbane native's second LP feels "as though every track is a song that you half-remember from a crackling radio sometime in your sunny youth."

Gabriella Cohen’s genre-shifting Pink is the Colour of Unconditional Love is a mosaic of homage, impromptu influences and her own psyche.