Cola’s ‘Cost of Living Adjustment’ Arrives as a Quietly Definitive Third Album

Cola’s third album borrows its title from a band name they almost chose. The self-referential gesture lands as a statement of arrival. Across 44 minutes, Tim Darcy, Ben Stidworthy and Evan Cartwright pull two previous records and a shared history in Ought into tighter focus, delivering songs where every choice carries structural weight.

Valentin Ignat recorded the eleven tracks at Studio Mixart in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. Harris Newman handled mastering at Grey Market. Both names belong to a network of Montreal facilities and engineers that underpin a distinct strain of independent music in the city. The credits point to a record built inside a local architecture rather than one chasing outward scale.

The single “Hedgesitting” offers the most immediate clue to the album’s internal logic. A sampled hip-hop drum loop sits beside Cartwright’s live playing, creating a baggy pulse that Stidworthy’s bass carries with a looseness the band rarely permitted before. Cartwright, whose background includes Toronto’s jazz-adjacent circles, brings a sense of when a snare hit should not land. Stidworthy bends timing without ever letting the songs feel unmoored. The rhythm section dialogue has shed any leftover angularity from Ought in favor of something more economic and less predictable.

Darcy’s voice remains unmistakable, but his delivery here curbs its own tics. The restraint reads as a deliberate avoidance of mannerism. What emerges is a band working with a highly developed shorthand, confident enough to strip away anything that does not actively hold the music upright.