A chat with An Horse’s Damon Cox

by Heather Christie

When I first heard the words “Damon Cox” and “An Horse” together, I had to take a time-out to conjure up delicious images of glistening—and particularly well-endowed—centaurs. Let’s take another fantasy time-out for said images now.

Ok, now—ahem—prick up your ears to the very serious matter of Cox…an, er, upstanding member of An Horse. The man is learning how to relax again. And it’s no wonder; he and his partner in crime Kate Cooper have spent the last little stretch touring with Tegan and Sara, as well as Death Cab for Cutie. They ditched their jobs at a Brisbane record shop, decamped to L.A. and are currently consuming copious amounts of Tequila. Oh, and most of this happened with only an EP, a fair amount of chutzpah, and a knit sweater bearing the image of an equine and a grammatically ambiguous article-noun pairing.

Sounds like the typical living-the-dream trajectory, ripe for a bit of rather apathetic hipster disaffect? You’d think, but our man Cox is about as genuine as they come, happy to be who he is, doing what he’s doing. “We feel very blessed,” says Cox with a delightfully soft Aussie speaking voice that anyone would feel equally blessed to loop on repeat. “We didn’t have any expectations, all we can really hope is that people like [our music]. They seem to like it, which is a good thing.”

Damn right, it’s a good thing. Another good thing is An Horse’s recently-released LP, Rearrange Beds. The album is a collection of surging rock anthems with Cooper’s reedy-but-resonant vocals and power-pop guit-boxing drummed up with Cox’s pulsating rhythmic stylings. While anyone would naturally love to have Cox Rearrange her—or his—bed, the album is a bit much in one go. It’s most enjoyable thrown into a three or four album shuffle.

But back to Cox. He’s coming. An Horse plays—how fitting—at The Horseshoe on June 10. In the meantime, here’s a verbal postcard from Cox in L.A: “The image would probably have a bottle of tequila, some sunshine, and something to throw up in” and ‘We’ve Had a Lot of Fun’ would be the tagline.”

When you check them out live, Cox and Cooper will have prepped with a few pre-show high-kicks in their quest to “try to be as honest as [they] can”. Honesty, high-kicks and a lot of fun: that’s Cox—and An Horse–in a nutshell. Now, back to the centaurs…