Cortez – Thieves And Charlatans (Ripple Music) [Rich Piva]
Boston’s Cortez have been bringing the stoner doom heavy since 2006, but now, in 2024, the band has created their best work with their new record, Thieves And Charlatans, brought to us via Ripple Music. The band has always kicked ass and has been one of the top tier outfits of the genre, but Thieves And Charlatans brings a complexity and a variability in styles that has not been as prevalent on their previous four other full lengths. Add that, with some next level songwriting and their usual killer playing, and you get the best Cortez record till date and an album of the year candidate.
Opening with the most straight up party rock song (I hear late 80s hard rock) the band has ever done (in the best sort of way), Gimme Danger sets the tone for a different sort Cortez experience. It is not like the band has gone and done some kind of prog concept record and added a brass section, but Gimme Danger is enough of a departure to certainly notice something different here, and I am so here for it. Leaders Of Nobody has an Ugly period Life Of Agony feel to it with a killer riff and excellent vocals from Matt Harrington. I love the tempo changes and how it seemingly crawls to its end.
Stove Up is the trademarked Cortez rocker with killer riffs and excellent vocals that has always made Cortez so great. No Heroes is a gigantic song. It is huge all around, from the playing to the singing and goes in all sorts of excellent directions. It is on Levels when we really get into the genius of Thieves And Charlatans. This is like the stoner doom version of Jane’s Addiction’s Three Days which is to say this absolutely rules and is my favourite Cortez track ever and one of my favourite songs in a long time. I am not overstating this. Eight minutes and twenty-two seconds of brilliance.
Odds Are and Liminal Spaces are songs that remind you how much the band understands both the heavy side of things as well as melody, with the latter using some cool vocal effects. The closer, Solace, is almost on the level of Levels and is a huge, dynamic, and intense way to close out a record. It would have been easy and probably still excellent if Cortez put out a record of riff heavy rockers in the stoner doom vein that they excel at. Instead Thieves And Charlatans takes a band almost 20 years in down a path of creating their masterpiece by flexing their creative muscles and taking some risks, with a seriously amazing payoff. 10/10
