Siobhan Cotchin
Do You Know What I Mean?
Independent
West Australian alt-country singer-songwriter Siobhan Cotchin has emerged recently as one of the brightest burning talents in the growing country music scene. Stellar support slots with acts like Spacey Jane have only seen her reputation grow. It all belies her remarkable youth, and there’s a precocity to Cotchin’s comfort in songwriting and instrumentation that is luckily never insincere.
Both of these skills are in evidence on new single Do You Know What I Mean?, an effortlessly enjoyable and relatable country anthem. It comes on the heels of her debut song Tear Myself Apart and builds on that one’s success, continuing in its stomping and ruminative vein. Do You Know What I Mean? is infused with melancholic ideas of change and the existential dread emanating from the song will be familiar to most listeners, lending the single a universal appeal.
It also, in a way, feels prescient in the time of COVID-19: Cotchin opens with the line “I don’t know if I want time to slow up or speed down”, a sentiment surely understood by everyone currently undergoing the disorienting effects of lockdown; elsewhere she sings “it’s not that I’ve been busy, I just can’t seem to get out of my own head”, in essence marking Do You Know What I Mean? as a connecting anthem for these strange times.
All the lyricism plays out over a storming and vibrant guitar riff, one indebted to the swinging country rock of the 1960s. With just these two excellent songs under her belt, it’s exciting to think where Cotchin will take her listeners next and she should continue to make her mark on the Perth music scene in the coming years.
CONOR LOCHRIE
