Montreal Post-Punk Group Ought Have Announced Their Break-Up; Members Reform As Cola & Share Debut Single “Blank Curtain”

After nearly 9 years as a band and following three critically-acclaimed full lengths, the Montreal post-punk group Ought have announced their break up via the band’s Instagram.

You can read their full statement here:

“We are no longer active as a band. When we started Ought in 2012 we had no greater aspirations than to play and write music together, and the fact that we were able to tour the world to such an extent and share so many rooms with so many of you has meant the world to us. We send lots of gratitude and love to all those we met and worked with along the way.

Going forward, you can check out Cola, a new project featuring Tim D. and Ben. We’ll keep this channel active to share any relevant news from members of the band. – XO”

Despite this ending to their earlier creative partnership, Ought’s Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy are announcing the formation of a new band called Cola, formed with US Girls drummer Evan Cartwright, and sharing their first single “Blank Curtain”. The track provides an exciting hint of the way the new project picks up some of the threads of the pair’s earlier work and weaves them into engaging new shapes, constructing a driving tangle of guitars around an arresting performance from Darcy.

“What started as stripped-down open D songwriting with a CR-78 soon became a full album and new band. We wanted to see how far we could stretch our compositions with just drums, one guitar, one bass, and one voice. ‘Blank Curtain’ is a quarter note kick drum pushing 240 bpm, a drone-like chord progression, and declarative vocals cutting through the haze. If you could invert the color of the ‘Blank Curtain’, you might have something like a Chicago house track that sounds like a band in a room.”

To coincide with the single’s release the band are announcing their signing to Next Door Records and their live debut which will take place on November 6 at La Sala Rossa in Montreal. A performance in Brooklyn at Baby’s All Right on November 16 will follow.