Aaron Mangle has been playing solo under the name A Helpful Diagram
for a couple years, but this summer he picked up a band and became
Cousins. While the scrappy, low-fi aesthetic of A Helpful Diagram had
its charms, Mangle’s songs develop into something more when fleshed out
with a full band, foggy indie-rock with heavy drum and bass lines and a
big heart. It’s just Mangle playing every instrument on the record, so
it’s less intense than Cousins’ live shows have become, but an
encouraging start: what’s unchanged is the warm, fuzzy feeling about
living in Halifax that Mangle brings out in his lyrics.
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2009.