Off Chops - '07 Corolla' : Single Review

Sydney based band Off Chops gives three cheers to the imperfect perfection of a first car with their latest single ‘07 Corolla. 

Heartfelt, tender, and distinctly Australian, ‘07 Corolla is a love letter to frontman Yossi Cascun’s very own Corolla. Yossi captures the bittersweet melancholy feeling many hold for their first car when finally letting it go to the rust-bucket factory in the sky. 

Off Chops relishes in the memories and identity you build alongside a car that has leaky windows, a boot that won’t close, and a perpetual fight against a dying battery that’ll still take you anywhere you’re brave enough to risk. A car your friends will kick their dirty boots up in, a car that rattles and shakes, a car your family makes fun of you for clinging onto. 

‘07 Corolla's melody is sweet, soft, yet maintains the full emo pub-rock elements Off Chops are known for with their debut self-titled EP ‘Off Chops’ and recently released single ‘Get Outlook for Android’. It begins with an indie-rock, fingerpicked, guitar and Nick Summerhay’s crooning voice, rough, warm and comfortingly Australian. 

It comes to an end with an atmospheric final guitar solo that has a beautiful soaring crescendo, slow building, melodic and aching, reminiscent of solos from punk rock greats The Offspring and emo-band legends My Chemical Romance. 

Off Chops create an incredible harmony between rhythm and lead guitar and a vocal chorus to build a soundscape that feels like flying down a highway on a summer's day, windows cracked because the aircon doesn’t work, with a secret beer tucked between your knees and one too many friends in the back. ‘07 Corolla is the perfect driving song. 

Lyrically, Off Chops are honest, straight-forward, and familiar. They pull from ‘male emotionality’ common in Australian pub rock bands and singer songwriters such as Paul Kelly, Cold Chisel and Powder Finger. Lyrics such as ‘without you in my driveway I don’t know who I am’ encapsulate that raw honesty and ability to expose tough feelings openly. 

Whilst at surface level ‘07 Corolla is about a first car it tugs on deeper feelings of an incoming life-change, a maturity shift, and a warm nostalgia for a period of time that has passed. It’s a well-told story, a story that disguises itself as a story about a car, but really feels like a warm, loving, farewell in preparation for a new, welcome, beginning. 

Yossi Cascun wrote the song following the suggestion from his wife Jen that they would need to sell his Corolla for a more suitable car in preparation for their daughter. Both musically and lyrically you can feel and hear an appreciation for a new life, for an old life, and for that strange melancholic in between. 

‘07 Corolla is a love letter. A love letter to a first car. A love letter to growing up. A love letter to Australiana, and pub-rock, and a daughter on the way. It’s tender, emotional yet thrilling, playfully embracing warm feelings of an adventure still to come and heartfelt memories of the adventures that have been.

For more Off Chops find their socials and upcoming shows here.