Though probably most widely known for his short-lived dancy punk band
Test Icicles,
Sam Mehran produced a prolific amount of lo-fi pop and chillwave adjacent sounds under multiple aliases. Around the time of his death in 2018,
Mehran had been working on material for an instrumental album, allegedly recording over 100 songs for the album in a single month. The resultant
Cold Brew was compiled by friends and family and released posthumously, the first of
Mehran's many solo ventures to bear his legal name. The various sides of
Mehran's wide-ranging musical personality blend into each other throughout
Cold Brew. The relaxed title track is built on a carefree groove that initially feels slightly aggressive, but soon fades into dazzled dreaminess as the prickly fuzz bass is overpowered by gently floating synth pads and languishing guitar leads. "Loungy" relies even more heavily on synths, offering up a slice of high-energy chillwave that shifts gears abruptly midway through the track. There are traces of
Mehran's punk rock past sprinkled throughout
Cold Brew as well. The grungy "Normie" is made up of buzzsaw guitar tones, nervous drums, and effects-heavy alien sounds, "Shred" is a frantic blur of programmed drum heroics and guitar wizardry, and "Bad Religion" kinda just sounds like
Bad Religion. Even with all of
Mehran's quick stylistic shifts,
Cold Brew remains cohesive and interconnected. "Xylo" is perhaps one of the best moments on the album, a song where several conflicting styles -- distorted mod pop rhythms, wistful indie rock melodies, itchy guitar lines -- meet and gel into something new.
Cold Brew never feels unfinished, despite the circumstances surrounding its creation and release. There was no additional production or recording done to these songs after
Mehran's death, and of the dozens of tracks that were in progress when the sessions were called to an abrupt end, the 17 chosen to represent his vision all flow wonderfully together, creating an environment that can be strange and wiry, but never overly serious or heavy. ~ Fred Thomas