Like letters committed to well-worn paper by hand in elegant cursive, the music of Dear Dear channels a bygone charm and delicate magic.
Finding enchantment in the melancholic Laurel Canyon bliss of Joni Mitchell (“a fucking wizard,” in her estimation) and Jackson Browne as a child, singer, songwriter, artist, and fashion designer Chase Cohl has crafted a vision of dream folk with moments of rock ‘n’ roll energy, transporting the Summer of Love’s gloriously stoned spirit to the modern generation. At the center, Cohl pens poetic narratives of love gone awry, loneliness, and loss over a subtle backdrop of orchestral, Wrecking Crew-style melodies.
Born in Canada to a mother and father of impeccable taste, the songstress fell in love with classic songwriters early on. Combing through her parents’ record collections, she consumed everything from Woody Guthrie and Darlene love to James Taylor and Etta James. With dad in the record industry, a young Chase can share snapshots of being backstage as a kid with the Rolling Stones and other luminaries, citing Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood as her “style icons” to this day. She quietly picked up piano before eventually moving on to guitar and banjo during her college days as a poetry major in New York City where she devoured the works of
Jerome Rothenberg, Henry Miller, Arthur Rimbaud, and others. Simultaneously, she drew on a lifelong passion for sewing and unassumingly crafted the debut collection of Littledoe’s headpieces in 2009, which was immediately embraced by the fashion & celebrity set.
Post-graduation, the budding musician traded the Big Apple for Laurel Canyon. “I had this idea of being barefoot in the garden year round,” she laughs. “The idea of California was always very inspiring to me.” She now splits her time evenly between New York & Los Angeles.
In the midst of presciently building Littledoe into a Vogue-endorsed early progenitor of the modern Boho movement sported by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and other fashion icons, she penned countless songs. Between performing alongside the likes of Cory Chisel and Cameron Avery as well as on a series of Best Fest shows, she released singles “Windsong” and “Blue Eyes” to early praise from Nylon, Exclaim, and more. In the middle of a 2016 tour with Lissie (and a breakup), she started to work on the songs that would eventually comprise her 2017 independent full-length debut “Far Away & Gone”
For her 2021 musical project “Dear Dear” which will be released in four digestible EP volumes, Cohl partnered with legendary keys player Barry Goldberg, to explore a new direction. “We bonded over our mutual love of the great girl groups, The Ronettes, The Crystals, that timeless sound those studio sessions created” Cohl states, leading up to the release of Volume I. The magic was born when, joined by her producer Loren Humphrey [Florence & the Machine, Arctic Monkeys, The Last Shadow Puppets,], Chase entered into sessions at Valentine Studios in Los Angeles. A true “time capsule,” it served as the site for seminal recordings by The Beach Boys and Elvis before closing its doors in the late sixties and recently reopening. Untouched, the original console, equipment, and décor remained intact and offered a distinct energy for our heroine’s seven-day marathon recording session in 2016.
“It’s got such a special vibe, that place. The word groovy comes to mind,” she smiles. “You walk in, and nothing has changed. It’s an absolute trip. I tend toward being inspired by the sixties and seventies as is. This feels like being stuck in 1965, which made it natural to flow into that sound. We wanted to record everybody live off the floor, the way it used to be done. I’m a purist that way. The energy in the room was palpable.”
Among many friends who rolled through, the likes of Zachary Dawes (Last Shadow Puppets, Mini Mansions), Tyler Parkford (Arctic Monkeys), Benji Lysacht (Adele, Father John Misty) Kane Ritchotte (Portugal the Man) James Richardson [MGMT], Benjamin Booker, and more performed alongside her in the studio.
Raising the curtain, first focus track “Take It Like A Man” commences with a reverb-y lead guitar & shoop’s reminiscent of The Supremes-era, and a lilting croon as she laments, “So you went & left me cold, hurt me to my very soul.”
“I wanted the EP to unfold as a story of this female character, watching her grow into her own skin, feeling her strength multiply,” she continues. “I’m forever asking people to share in personal experiences. It’s so much about navigating through my demons, and the demons of others, ideally to turn those into something productive. It doesn’t even have to be positive, just truly creative and therefore cathartic. It felt important to me to be wildly vulnerable & naked. So many of the themes are tragic & even a little pathetic feeling, but the music has this sort of hopeful feeling.”
The Volume I opener “Special Situation” introduces itself to the listener like warm honey. “Oooh I love you, I love you” by a force of 70s style backing vocals set the stage for a sultry female-driven anthem that embodies the heartbreaking chaos of watching a lover slip through one’s fingers. Closing out the EP is “Can’t Live Without You”, a love song to the magic of New York City & the moments that make it truly special. Cohl croons “cherry blossoms whisper as we pass, streets of stone they melt right into glass”, when reminiscing on a late night stroll through Central Park. “I have been missing the romance of living in New York, those magic romantic nights where the city feels like a living, breathing thing.The ultimate attraction I have for the female perspective in this style of music is she’s unabashedly herself. No shame in giving her whole heart, even to have it shattered. It’s that young love naïveté that we lose so quickly. That’s something I’m consistently trying to re-embody. Just putting it all out there..”
Ultimately, it’s this kind of honesty that makes Chase’s music timeless.
“I want listeners to feel like they’re not alone when they hear me,” she leaves off. “If this record affects one person to be okay with that vulnerability, that’s all I could ever ask for.”
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