If you’re a fan of modern folk and you haven’t heard of Cooza, then it’s about time you familiarise yourself with the upcoming star. With a voice as smooth as Sufjan Stevens and lyrics that would hold up if written in a poetry book, his popularity has been steadily increasing, primarily due to his 2020 song ‘I Can See New Zealand From Here’, which has made it onto Spotify’s ‘The Most Beautiful Songs in the World’ playlist, and rightly so.

“Truly experimenting within the versatile sound of folk”

Growing up in a small yet loud home of music lovers, young singer-songwriter Cooza found his peace in folk music in his early teenage years. Soon enough, he began to make folk music of his own: “I wanted to write music when I realised my feelings about everything that ever happened to me, the world and the people I loved were far too large to carry without letting them out.” His first song, ‘In Hiding’ tells the story of a nomad returning from life in the wilderness: “It wasn’t a great song but it helped me know partly what I wanted to write about.”

And so, we were blessed with Our Day — a true hidden gem among the plethora of pandemic albums in 2020. Despite its minimalistic and haunting sound, his bewitching vocals and poetic lyrics are captivating, bringing the heart of any listener knee-deep into its heart-rending narrative. He describes it as an album about “quiet mental turbulence whilst in a relationship and feeling you can’t speak about it”. Truly experimenting within the versatile sound of folk, he cites Bon Iver’s 22, A Million as an inspiration: “[it] showed me I could break sonic rules and do whatever I wanted,” seeping into his album “with its subtly freakish electronic elements intertwined with something that sounds so organic and intimate.” Even with his musical versatility, he describes himself as “a storyteller before a musician”, which truly shows in his elegantly crafted lyricism.

However, a lot has happened since September 2020, and so his second album, Contours of a Cliff, details his journey through new struggles. Taking a slightly different approach to the first, Cooza tells me that this album is“ less about being hurt by someone in particular and more about finding myself after my whole world is flipped upside-down. It’s a self-discovery album about finding peace in a new place, physically or mentally.” As part of both his creative process and personal healing, Cooza retreated to nature — “I saw how cliffs were carved by the waves of the sea, and managed, as writers do, to relate it to my situation. I saw the tumultuous waves and in that moment of loneliness, felt as though I had been exiled out to sea; the most unpredictable, expansive, cold and isolating force in nature.”

The two singles released ahead of the album, ‘Beige’ and ‘Grey’, present two distinct, yet equally profound sides to Contours of a Cliff. ‘Beige’ carries a fuller sound than much of his earlier work, as Cooza, in his delicate voice, longs to meet a former lover in his dreams, while ‘Grey’ feels simpler, with a more raw production, representing the more “washed out” and “hollow” of the second half of the album. Describing the structure of the new album, he says: “The first half shows a breakup happening over the course of a few months, and how even though the relationship isn’t yet over, you know it’s coming. Then the second half is once it finally happens.”

Inspired by Taylor Swift’s nostalgia-infused songwriting and Adrienne Lenker’s disorienting, yet delicate sound on songs, Contours of a Cliff is certainly looking to be a touching tale of emotional suffering and recovery. Wearing his heart on his sleeve, Cooza hopes the songwriting on his new album showcases his ability to “bleed everywhere and make a mess, with so little” in his lyrics, but, most importantly, he hopes that listening to it will provide people with the same help that writing it gave to him.