Contradictions characterize multi-instrumentalist Louis Cole’s output. His music alternates between sincere and silly, sublime and superficial, while jumping between disparate genres like pop, jazz fusion, and electronica. He embraces a lo-fi, DIY aesthetic and approach to production but practices obsessively and is meticulously detailed in his songwriting. As Cole proclaims on the track “I’m Tight” from his sprawling 2022 album Quality Over Opinion, “I give a fuck, and don’t give a fuck / That is why I’m tight”.
It is fitting, then, that Louis Cole’s most recent album nothing—a collaboration with the Dutch pop orchestra Metropole Orkest and conductor Jules Buckley—contains practically everything. It is stylistically diverse and features a massive cast of performers, including the core band, an ensemble of female singers, and the aforementioned orchestra. nothing is mostly compiled from live recordings of Cole’s European tour with the Metropole Orkest and Buckley, which are accompanied by a full video (complete with skeleton costumes).
The album’s classical music influence is apparent from its opening moments with the regal, Baroque-inflected “Ludovici Cole Est Frigus” (which directly translates to “Louis Cole Is Cold”—there isn’t a Latin word for “cool”). The piece features dense contrapuntal string passages accompanying choir vocals and a church organ, conveying Cole’s command of orchestral writing and arranging. While he has flirted with classical music in some of his earlier outings as a solo artist and with Knower (his partnership with singer-songwriter Genevieve Artadi), this is his most ambitious exploration of orchestral music yet.
Louis Cole moves into more familiar territory in nothing, deftly blending pop, funk, jazz, and electronic influences to craft catchy yet complex songs. Tracks like “Things Will Fall Apart” and “These Dreams are Killing Me” feature danceable funk grooves and anthemic choruses, while “Cruisin’ for P” ventures into big band swing. Most of the material here is brand new. However, there are orchestral reworkings of a couple of tracks from Quality Over Opinion, and some songs resemble Knower’s 2023 release, Knower Forever.
All the songs on nothing take full advantage of the orchestral palette, adding a lush, cinematic quality that rarely feels heavy-handed. “I have so many ideas that have built up over my lifetime of things I’ve wanted to write for an orchestra,” Cole tells MusicTech. “They all came out, and I tried to write as many ideas that I was inspired to.” The versatility of Buckley and the Metropole Orkest, which has a legacy of working with artists ranging from Ella Fitzgerald to Snarky Puppy, is the perfect fit for Cole’s genre-hopping tendencies.
nothing also features many of Louis Cole’s long-time collaborators, including singers Artadi and Fuensanta, who often share lead vocal duties with him. Keyboardist Rai Thistlewayte, pianist Jacob Mann, saxophonist David Binney, and guitarist Pedro Martins have several searing solos across the album. Sam Wilkes holds down the low end with syncopated bass grooves. Cole’s signature frenetic drumming is also showcased on many tracks, including “Weird Moments” and “A Pill in the Sea”—one of the album’s highlights.
It’s a testament to Cole’s mixing skills that he can layer thick synthesizers, chunky basslines, punchy drums, and an entire orchestra without sounding muddy or overcrowded—a process that took nine months. That said, there are times when the production feels a bit muted, and Cole’s falsetto vocals slip too far into the back of the mix.
The tracklist is punctuated by a handful of instrumental orchestral pieces, including “It All Passes”, “nothing”, and “Doesn’t Matter”. Most of these pieces are indebted to Romantic-era classical music and film scores, with the title track calling to mind the adagietto from Gustav Mahler’s fifth symphony (a work Louis Cole described as “one of the best pieces of music written of all time”). Despite his clear influences, Cole’s orchestral writing never feels like a pastiche or homage and always incorporates his unique approach to harmony. These instrumentals are all beautiful, even if they occasionally disrupt the album’s flow.
The pacing is also somewhat thrown off by a handful of short pieces that, while interesting and enjoyable, seem more like fragments than fully realized ideas. This includes the charming woodwind- and brass-driven “Wizard Funk”, which features one of the funkiest bass clarinet parts around, and “Who Cares 1” and “Who Cares 2”, the latter of which quickly descends into the orchestral equivalent of Clown Core (a band Cole insists he’s never heard of). However, the stylistic whiplash on nothing is classic Cole: he has said that stark tonal shifts between tracks are “less about me wanting to surprise someone else and more that I want to keep myself interested in it.”
Aligning with the album and track titles, many of nothing’s lyrics have an existential, nihilistic tone. Louis Cole confronts emptiness and meaninglessness with a shrug and “so what?” attitude. As he declares in the chorus to “Things Will Fall Apart”: “Yes, understood / Things will fall apart just like they should / This little shred was good”. Yet the lyrics are often sincere and vulnerable as well. The ballad “High Five”, a duet between Cole and Artadi, is a touching testament to an enduring friendship, while the stripped-down closing track “You Belonged” is a poignant reflection on death.
While nothing has flaws—slightly uneven pacing, retreading some musical ground—Cole’s collaboration with the Metropole Orkest and Buckley is arguably his most ambitious and wide-ranging project to date. By seamlessly blending diverse genres with creative orchestral arrangements, Louis Cole proves he can make something out of nothing.