Warmer Than Gold, the new album from Ben Cook’s project GUV, is a document of a life in music, a critical and celebratory travelogue, an attempt to transcend the homogeneous and status-obsessed conditions of the contemporary world through the use of big beats, big choruses, and distortion. It’s a record made on the go that makes sense anywhere. And most of all, with its expanded sonic palette and emphasis on breakbeats, it ushers in the newest era of an artist who has never stopped growing.

Cook, who grew up moving between Toronto and England, boasts anglo bonafides that separate him from the growing pack of hardcore kids sporting windbreakers and bowl cuts. Two of the first shows he attended, at the age of 12, were Oasis and Neil Young. After the show, he remembers thinking, “Yeah, I’m gonna do music forever.” Not long after he discovered hardcore and punk, and it was off to the races, first with his beloved hardcore band, No Warning (who he continues to play with to this day), then as a member of punk experimentalists, Fucked Up, from 2007 to 2021–and all the while building a deep and impressive catalog of solo work first as Young Governor, then Young Guv, and now simply, GUV (“I’m not so young anymore, three letter band names are cool, and I’m tired of being mistaken for a rapper,” Cook notes).

Cook, who grew up moving between Toronto and England, boasts anglo bonafides that separate him from the growing pack of hardcore kids sporting windbreakers and bowl cuts. Two of the first shows he attended, at the age of 12, were Oasis and Neil Young. After the show, he remembers thinking, “Yeah, I’m gonna do music forever.” Not long after he discovered hardcore and punk, and it was off to the races, first with his beloved hardcore band, No Warning (who he continues to play with to this day), then as a member of punk experimentalists, Fucked Up, from 2007 to 2021–and all the while building a deep and impressive catalog of solo work first as Young Governor, then Young Guv, and now simply, GUV (“I’m not so young anymore, three letter band names are cool, and I’m tired of being mistaken for a rapper,” Cook notes).

1. Let Your Hands Go
2. Blue Jade
3. Warmer Than Gold
4. Thorns In
5. Out of this Place
6. Chasin Luv
7. Seaside Story
8. Oscillating
9. Hello Miss Blue
10. Never Should Have Said
11. Crash Down Feeling
12. September Grey