Cooper Kenward - ha ha, now i’m sad (2025) Hi-Res

Words on the existential questions of life set to top-quality seventies pop with added country. “ha ha, now i’m sad” is LA-based Cooper Kenward’s third album after “Cooper Kenward” (2022) and “Dying in a Diner” (2024). It takes you back to the seventies, with its Steely Dan-like pop, and you can even hear an echo of 10CC at one point. It features some great songs and melodies, often accompanied by gentle slide or lead guitar, and steel guitar and fiddle, which lends a country flavour at times. Brass and keyboards are used too, and the music is very easy on the ear. In addition, Kenward’s words have a quirky originality – both lighthearted and then more serious in turn, hence the title “ha ha, now I’m sad”– which sparks a real interest.

The album gets off to a cracking start with some glam rock drums leading into ‘53’ Bel Air’. It’s warm nostalgia for those of us of a certain age. The song settles into a fabulous groove, then horns belch out later, and you are reminded a bit of Mott The Hoople, in a good way. It is a rollicking tale of a bank robbery and what the gang are up to now: “Bobby got picked up doin’ 95/ And Larry’s still in Atlanta/ Doing something that might make him die”. But there is no guilt here: “Money flying out the back Of a 53’ Bel Air/ If you didn’t want us to have it/ Why’d you put it there?”

Next up is ‘Wheelies’, driven by a wonderful soulful riff on a loop. Here, the quirkiness is right to the fore: “Hey there Stanley, you doing well?/ heard your girlfriend’s back from jail/ She was mouthing off/ To an undercover cop/ Wearing nothing but a sports bra on the neighbors lawn.” Kenward is a film director in another life, and the bizarre video for this has an alien landing and teaching him to do tricks on a skateboard. There’s no danger of things getting too sombre with him.

However, it’s not all levity. The moving ‘Queen of It All’, with its gentle loping rhythm, has a drag queen writing to a friend from his youth. He desperately misses the friend and the good times they had together. In the country music of ‘Hello Neighbour’, there is a “stream-of-consciousness” dialogue about the world around and the sad words, “nothing like a crowd/ To make you feel alone”. In the love song, ‘Full of It’, he writes: “This world is full of shit/ But with you I share it/ Oh baby I love you so”

Kenward is very concerned with the messy existential problems of life and how we spend our limited time here. Throughout, he writes with an intense interest in the minutiae of his surroundings, and in the ballad ‘Long Way Around’ he seems to suggest that having this interest is the path best taken through life. He sees the absurdity of life, though, and knows the importance of humour in our existence, stating: “You can spend your days with god/ I’ll be hanging with the clowns”.

On first hearing, the final track, ‘Ken Burns Hot Dog’, a bizarre dialogue spoken by someone sounding like a Hollywood actor, doesn’t seem to work. Based on the idea that “Sometimes your pappy tells you you’re going to be a hot dog one day” it then deals with the tragedy of not following the artistic life you want. However, as you get to know the album, you recognise that it chimes with Kenward’s view of life’s absurdity and is perhaps a plea to give it some meaning by going the way you want.

This is a very impressive album that has the glories of seventies music, but then improves on it with its original and thoughtful words of both humour and sadness.