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This breezy debut from Cotton Jones makes for one smooth trip.
With the crush of indie, and decidedly not jam bands, reviving the acid-and-mushroom-friendly psychedelic rock and pop sound of the ’60s (with heavy doses of the Dead, Jimi Hendrix, and Pet Sounds passed around like blotter paper), very few have referenced the Doors. On Paranoid Cocoon, the breezy debut from Cotton Jones, spacey bass carries “Little Ashtray in the Sun,” swirling keyboards shine on “Photo Summerlude,” an instrumental so airy it floats, and Michael Nau (formerly of Page France) channels Jim Morrison often, drawing heavily on his kaleidoscopic range on “Up a Tree (Went This Heart I Have).” But Cotton Jones is more than a one-trip pony. The shimmering “Some Strange Rain” is more the Sea and Cake than Soft Parade, while the twang on “Gone the Bells,” a beautiful duet with vocalist Whitney McGraw, recalls Richard and Linda Thompson or, more recently, Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward’s She & Him. Nau and McGraw croon on “By Morning Light,” “It always disappears into the white,” and on this trip, it certainly does.
