Austin Wilson

To paraphrase Robert Christgau’s review of Brian Wilson’s long-awaited 2004 production of SMiLE, Low’s CoinciDATE is a tonic for American millennials who have watched their employment prospects wrecked and social environments carved out between a small band of techie robber barons. Whether we’re selling our endless sorrow or successes for the benefit of commercial advertisement space is mostly up to circumstances beyond our control; this is the underlying conflict the characters push against to propel forward the plot of CoinciDATE as they struggle with their origins and the contexts of their lives – the commercial and social systems of working people in 2020 – with mixed success and often questionable thinking. Some of them will earn your sympathy even if none of them particularly deserve it (enough of them especially do not). While the plot moves through an absurdist set of contexts, in 2020 they are never terribly unbelievable – especially the darkest moments – as they are only a permutation of the troubles of that annus horribilis and the subject matter at hand is prosaic and relevant to most readers who have ever experienced any quantity or quality of setback in their lives. Generally, if you enjoy character studies (Randy Newman’s character pieces come to mind especially), social criticism, and ambiguity you will enjoy this work that is ultimately sympathetic to the human condition in our inhuman moment. Low is able to craft this contemporary portrait without didacticism brutalizing the reader towards any implicit social messaging while also not, by any measure, stooping to the lowest common denominators of our time.