Alice in the Hinterlands

Ex-Vels frontwoman Alice Cohen returns to Philly to plant Sky Flowers.

by A.D. Amorosi

LOOK HER WAY: Alice Cohen plays Sugar Town this Saturday at Tritone. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Primitive, pretty and otherworldly are the words that come to mind when listening to Alice Cohen's first solo record, Sky Flowers. Notions of the icily detached are part of the equation, too — the sad remoteness of her lyrics, the floating melancholy of her music. Anyone familiar with Cohen, or the "Alice Desoto" who led Philadelphia's the Vels through the New Wave '80s, wouldn't be surprised by that distance and its flash of tenderness. The Vels were one of this city's best entries into post-punk/electro-pop with singles like "Look My Way" and albums like Velocity to their credit. And when it was over, Cohen and her partners Charles Hanson and the late Chris Larkin didn't look back in anger or silly reminiscence. Cohen, a Conshohocken native, packed her bags before the '80s ended, moved to Brooklyn, created several radical art-rock ensembles (Shag Motor Pony, Die Monster Die, Espadrille) and visual art, all the while laying the groundwork for the prickly Sky Flowers.

City Paper: I never saw you or your aesthetic as particularly emotional. There was always something cool about you and your sound. It seems like with Sky Flowers you kept your promise and your distance.

Alice Cohen: You're definitely correct about the distance and lack of emotion. It's how I communicate, the way I am as a person. I feel emotion, but am not always comfortable expressing it. It's more comfortable to have some detachment and mystery.

CP: I remember some of the first Vels gigs but don't remember how you three got together.

AC: I had been in a relationship with Chris already, living together at the time that the band formed. I'd played keyboards in a band with Charlie, Club of Rome. So we were all involved in different ways, personally, musically — it was a pretty close-knit scene. We formed specifically as a concept, to play at the Love Club, and from the start knew we were onto something.

CP: I remember being impressed with the songs and the fact that Mercury sent the Vels to Compass Point and put you together with the Talking Heads crew. Do you feel like the label let you down after some of the shine went off electro-pop?

AC: The whole Compass Point thing was great. We were unassuming Philly folks, living in cheap apartments, suddenly in this amazing studio in the Bahamas. It was very surreal. As far as the record company letting us down, it is a shame that things didn't go further. We simply didn't sell enough records, I guess, to be big stars or anything.

CP: Let's just get this out of the way — Chris Larkin?

AC: I'm glad you're asking me about him. I hadn't been in touch with him for a long time — the last time I'd seen him was, ironically, Joey Wilson's funeral. It was a shock when I heard about Chris. He was a major part of my life, and his death hit me extremely hard.

CP: Totally switching gears: How the fuck did you come to write for Karen Young?

AC: One of the first bands I was in in Philly, where I wrote the songs, was Fun City. We had a little punk element, but we were basically a funk band, with some new wave thrown in. I had a song called "Deetour." There was a guy, a friend of the band's, who used to drive us to gigs in his van. His brother was a producer who worked with Karen. He decided it would be good for her so they recorded a very souped-up disco version that was on the Billboard dance charts for a long while.

CP: It took you a while release a solo record.

AC: I think this record was a reaction to the improv band, Castles, I had been in. The hours of playing improv music, resulted in a huge need to make songs again, and my "own" songs without any input or shaping from anyone else. I also felt a need to return to some of my old roots — lots of synth, some dance beats. I wanted this to sound really produced.

CP: For all its sleek beauty, the arrangements don't sound at all current — which I love.

AC: I used an older synthesizer, an Oberheim, for a lot of the tracks. There's a proggy feel to some of the sounds, a lot of reverb and delay in general, sort of a throwback to the production value of things like the Cocteau Twins, and that era.

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CP: What mood/idea did you want to articulate/recreate with songs like "Black Pepper?"

AC: "Black Pepper" is the song that a lot of people gravitate towards. I was in a sort of dark, almost goth-y period when I wrote that. That sound, is closer to the way I write, in general — an emotional place and mood which I'd describe as melancholy. It wrote itself in this very succinct, compact manner. I can't even tell you exactly what it's about, but it just works as a song. I think simplicity is a hard thing to achieve, so when it happens, it's a small miracle. I don't think it's an amazing song, it's just a simple song, but it sort of holds all the grains of ingredients for the whole album.

CP: You write a little bit about spirit photography on this album.

AC: I collect a lot of old occult books, and have studied occult subjects for years. I don't always believe in all of it, but it's something I think about and it creeps into my songs, especially the imagery — the translucent, the ghostly and invisible.

CP: "Floating Islands," Saturnal rings, interchangeable galaxies — is earth not enough?

AC: It's not just that earth is not enough, it's just that there are these other planes out there — space, dream worlds, underwater — they're all sort of expressions of mental or emotional planes for me. They're realms of the subconscious. I go into a certain state when I write songs. I do go places — some of them are earthly — sidewalks and city streets at night, for instance. But it feels so much like a dream realm — it might as well be another planet.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Alice Cohen, Yvette Perez's H*E*R*, Bells Bells Bells, Colette Columbirch and Julia Factorial play Sat., April 26, for Sugar Town at Tritone, 1508 South St., 9 p.m. $7, 215-545-0475, tritonebar.com.