Cole Davis - Consider It! - Totally Gross National Product

Totally Gross National Product is proud to present Consider It! NYC bassist Cole Davis’s debut album produced by Ryan Olson. The album features Bon Iver, Julian Lage, Channy Leaneagh (Poliça), Papa Mbye, and a long list of vocalists and players of diverse approaches. With Consider It! Davis steps out with the upright bass to display not only technical virtuosity with a buttery tone but also to reveal a complex new voice combining jazz and indie. 

Cole Davis hears upright bass on all styles of music. Beyond the tethered roles of jazz or bluegrass, he has long-imagined the sonic potential of his instrument as a collaborative voice. Cole studied jazz at Julliard while cutting his teeth in NYC jazz circles five nights a week, swimming professionally in the deep end of the jazz pool from twenty years old. With his rich ear committed to expanding the cultural and sonic relevance of the upright bass, Davis sought out producer Ryan Olson to make Consider It!: an album with the upright at the center of the emotional and structural narrative. Together Davis and Olson blended processed and acoustic sounds to transform the context and role of the upright bass, letting it become the storyteller within a wholly new sonic world.

To do this, the album features vocal performances and a deep bench of virtuoso genre-bending instrumentalists. The moody struggle of “I Want You Gone” has sheets of pushy vocals by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver laying atop a bed of Davis’s upright bass, Bryan Nichol’s piano and Julian Lage’s guitar. The album closes with the song “Miracle” featuring Poliça’s Channy Leaneagh’s hauntingly honest voice over upright bass chords and french horn harmonies that send your introspective thoughts to a place of needed confrontation, an unexpected final destination. The lead track, “Broke the Handle Off”, has Aaron Rice’s effortless lead vocal flow over Davis and drummer Chris Eagan’s deep pocket. And between is the soul earworm “Tooth and Nail” featuring KINFU and the cinematic vocal soundscape of Papa Mbye on “Back Street Driver”. 

The album also features six instrumental tracks that feel dedicated to the chance of existence in a timeless open space, speeding away from the fire but slowing down at the corner letting us make eye contact with a strange world passing by. Davis leads a group of mesmerizing and innovative improvisors that bring to life his shining compositional voice in the aching “Lo nesome Position Indeed” and “All Family Matters”. Tim Fain’s commanding violin guides us through the beautiful maze of “Cultivating New Frontiers in Carpentry” while CJ Camerieri’s (CARM) trumpet on “Gull” orders last call from the dimly-lit bar on a 1920s ocean liner. The album is full of rich performances like these from a list of talented contributors brought together by Olson.

With Consider It! the upright bass — once a silent giant in the ensemble — has found a powerful new voice in the evolving landscape of jazz and indie music. Cole Davis has taken what he’s already been hearing for so long and finally recorded it for all of us to dig.