Ryan O’Connell makes “So Cool” ease its way into your brain. It’s not trying to knock you out with studio polish or high-gloss hooks. Rather, it kicks in, blowing in the way a dusty breeze drifts through a less-than-half-open window, pulling with it a quiet sense of ache that is simultaneously reassuring and disarmingly honest.
From the first few bars, “So Cool” stakes out a township between a shrug and a sigh, a slow-burning indie cut replete with rusted bridge guitar tones that gleam like something found in the back of a backroom jam. It has the lo-fi unease of Pavement, the quiet intimacy of Elliott Smith, and the naked fragility of Neil Young’s Ditch Trilogy era. But for all those nods to the greats, this is Ryan O’Connell’s world, one of emotional knots and lyrics that sound more like whispered inner monologues.
The chorus, which reads like a goodbye if it didn’t sound so reluctant, is the emotional center of the song. It isn’t dramatic or grand, and it’s half-meant, half-understood, and entirely human. O’Connell sings dry and far away, as if trying not to feel too much and then feeling the hell out of the song, of course. The chords shifting beneath him are no more settled, never quite locking in, forever veering a little to one side, which mirrors the song’s lyrical uncertainty.
“So Cool” is not cool in the slick, standoffish sense. It’s cool, like old denim is cool – lived-in, a bit frayed, bearing stories in its seams. On “So Cool,” Ryan O’Connell captures a mood, an emotional weather system that’s as easily relatable as it's hard to describe. And that, frankly, is pretty fucking cool.
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