12 tracks packed with everything from love, sex, nostalgia, and 20s anxiety, Something to Feel Good About feels like a weirdly calming album for these - yes I'm gonna say it - unprecedented times. Mostly because I'd say 10/12 of these songs are absolute EARWORMS that will get stuck in your head for days.
Where songs like the title track, 'Be Around Me' and '10X MORE FUN' feel like they'd be perfect to blare in the middle of summer, Cook diversifies his track-list with musical reflections like '21', 'Last Year' and 'Only If You' - and this for me is where the album flies.
'21' feels like Cook somehow got into my own head and wrote a song about it. It's raw, honest, and speaks openly to the anxieties of growing up; "I don't know anyone who's 21 and knows how to feel". In a similar vain, 'Boundary Street' seems to speak to this... unprecedented... year; "Feel like this whole year just passed me by". But it's the closing track, 'Last Year' that hits home.
From the outset, it's an odd choice to finish an album off with. Lyrics reminisce about how "your grandparents died" and "someone cut your heart for the very first time". As the song progresses though, 'Last Year' becomes more about progression and improvement - an acknowledgement of what went wrong before in order to get better: "it's time to get the right way round." "You don't have to dance" feels like Cook's own way of phrasing that saying that we've all been accustomed with so recently this year; 'it's okay not to be okay'. I think it's fair to say that 2020 won't be looked back on fondly by many people, but 'Last Year' acknowledges that there are better times ahead.
It might've been a shite year, but Will Joseph Cook's album is definitely something to feel good about.
(4/5)