Isaac Watters brings a downbeat, noir mood to “Coconut In The Street.” In the live video version below we see what looks like black and white with some blue tones allowed in the color palette enhancing the cool, late night feel of the song. It sounds like a brooding blues song with a touch of urgent and shimmery synth around the edges. And of course Watters relating a story of tensions between the moneyed and the down and out and how both seem to exist not so far apart in the streets of Los Angeles where it’s not like a sanitized version from a movie but a city with as much grit and desperation as one might find in a city with more of a reputation for that, just with generally better weather unless it’s wildfire season. Watters’ imagery captures these contrasts well and sure early in the song you hear the ghost of Leonard Cohen haunting his style but as the song progresses and his wailing bursts in singing the late song chorus gives it a different flavor, one more imbued with an immediacy that elevates the song beyond a merely good singer-songwriter in the bluesy folk vein of today into something more mysterious when paired with the vivid poetry of the song’s lyrics that make it feel like watching one of William Friedkin’s Los Angeles movies do or if Jim Jarmusch did an entire movie set in the City of Angels. It hits as unexpectedly cool and uncommonly observant while giving you the language to describe social dynamics in fresh and creative ways. Lines like “You were so angry at the laughing stock downtown/Stumbling zombie on the edge of the freeway/You call the police, they say they’re on the way/But you can’t pull over” and “Double back flip off the new glass tower downtown/Is that you they found? Is that your enemy?/Is that the friend you always meant to be?” capture such a specific emotional space while grounding it in a specificity of place it invokes the familiar while inducing new ways to think about places you’ve been physically and psychologically. Watch the video for “Coconut In The Street” on YouTube and follow Isaac Watters at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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