Album Notes

George Cochrane is not your average post-dance-rock kid. Starting out in high school playing bass in a hesher metal band, he then made his way through sensitive-girl rock, funk, jazz and punk bands on a variety of instruments before getting sick of bands and going headlong into electronic music in 1997.

Amid putting out scads of well-recieved house and downtempo records with Andrew Phelan and Cubik, and playing countless live shows alongside acts like Greenskeepers and Lance DeSardi (Land Shark), George started to miss his days as a solo songwriter. Indie rock had gotten a whole lot more interesting since he'd jettisoned it in the late 90s. Maybe it was time for a rematch...

Playing and singing all of the parts and manning the console in his San Francisco studio, he began to piece together the bits that would eventually make up The White Pinecone. Armed with finely-honed electronic production skills, considerable instrumental bombast and a variety of things to get off his chest, surprising things started to spark.

Sleekly slipping from post-everything squall to electro-infused synth pop with screeching turns into shoegaze and funky disco shit, the album (to abuse a cliche) carves a niche all its own. George's vocals coo, shout, purr and testify throughout the "friends f*cking friends" your-scene-sucks digs on "Snowed In" and the mid-youth crisis of "The Key Is In The Lock". Hip-shaking live drums and interlocking guitars propel sweaty numbers like "Click Clack Click" and "Proving Nothing" while Vince Clarke's influence rears its head on "You Don't Know Me".