Comet Gain

[linus]

where can i order it? there isn't a record shop in manchester that sells that kind of thing

If you are in the UK either here: http://www.fortunapop.com/release_detai ... no=FPOP169 (direct from the label)

Or here:
http://www.piccadillyrecords.com/prod/C ... 97670.html

Or here:
http://www.normanrecords.com/records/14 ... ck-ghosts-

Or here:
http://www.roughtrade.com/albums/84419

Or even:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paperback-Ghost ... B00KQQN0PK

Other retailers are also available

[noLooking]

Fair to say that Piccadilly Records is a Manchester shop, so you could avoid pesky delivery charges by going there. Unless you live in Manchester, Bolivia, which probably doesn't have one.

[timahall]

where can i order it? there isn't a record shop in manchester that sells that kind of thing

Piccadilly Records in Manchester totally sells that kind of thing. Do yourself a favour and go pick up a copy there.

[ketameaningless]

nah, these days they only sell a record if the guy making it claims to be able to transform into a crocodile and plays a trumpet. i could always google it though

[linus]

there's a whole bunch of links up there where you can get it from, for starters, and piccadilly have it in stock according to their website and nowhere on the website does it mention turning into a crocodile and playing the trumpet before you buy

good luck with finding a copy of this incredibly hard-to-find record

[ketameaningless]

you know when someone says something snarky and someone else goes 'oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh' in a really high pitched voice? well i was only asking. what am i, the man who can be bothered to use google?

[ketameaningless]

oh hang on i just noticed you gave me a fat bunch of links! sorry a fog of ideas. my bad.thanks

[michael]

From what I've heard live it sounds great. Anyone here go to the two recent shows at the buffalo bar and the lexington? the latter was a real treat.
Funny how a few years back I asked the noble people of this forum what was the best CG album and know they're my favourite band. Oh how time swoons.

I just got round to watching some of that Buffalo Bar show. There are some great scuffed up versions of the new songs there, including "'Sad Love' and Other Short Stories" and "Behind the House She Lived In". And some nice between song chat - David on what you'll get at a Comet Gain show, "the one pound seventy-five version of the song you don't know".



(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sfp7rh3URQ)

[everard]

m'lady's are reissuing the 'realistes' lp and, even more excitingly, doing a two disc 'city fallen leaves'.

[noLooking]

I only noticed the other day that 'City Fallen Leaves' hadn't been released on record and it seemed wrong - surely it must be mandatory for Comet Gain LPs?

A double seems a but pointless though. It's perhaps just long enough for people to start fussing over the quality but it's well under an hour. And anyway, it's Comet Gain, it's going to sound like it was recorded in someone's toilet anyway.

[everard]

sure, the exciting part is it being finally on vinyl, not that it's a double. but at 50+ mins it needs to be. comet gain's stuff is pretty well-recorded, i'd say.

[noLooking]

sure, the exciting part is it being finally on vinyl, not that it's a double. but at 50+ mins it needs to be. comet gain's stuff is pretty well-recorded, i'd say.

Maybe so. I'm more thinking of 'Realistes' I suppose, which is about the same era and does sound pretty ropey (but in a good way obviously). I'm not really sure that 50 minutes can't fit on one record though. I can think of plenty of things that went on that long before (Hatful of Hollow, Painted Word, etc), it seems to be a fairly recent trend that doesn't really make that much difference. In all honesty I'd prefer it if labels got down to the basics of getting records pressed that are clean, flat and not scratched to fuck before they go in the sleeves. And I'll resent paying the extra, which is the important thing.

I've been on a big later Comet Gain spree recently so it'll give me something to look forward to, 'CFL' is one that I'm only just getting round to.

[michael]

Talk about the recorded sound of Comet Gain reminds me of this, from the Stereo Sanctity series of posts. He's talking about "Record Collection",

"But for a first-time listener unaccustomed to the ways of this band, something about it was fairly extraordinary. Something about the way this ‘d.christian’ throws caution to the wind in his vocal delivery, rejecting the slurs and sneers and mumbles expected of an ‘indie’ vocalist, as he instead tries to hurl his cracked, white-boy voice in the direction of the kind of catharsis an American soul singer might pull out of the this material, straining to hit notes his lungs can’t even conceive of, as if he’d stormed down to the studio (assuming this sonic disaster of an album ever saw the inside of a studio) straight after hurling said record collection at his lover’s tearful head."

"(assuming this sonic disaster of an album ever saw the inside of a studio)". Heh. Actually I've only got a copy of a copy of that album. Does anyone have it on record? What does that sound like?

Also, does anyone have "Fingerprint Ritual"?

http://www.fortunapop.com/release_detai ... no=FPOP170

That write up sounds good, and I like the explanation of its musical relationship to "Paperback Ghosts", "psychedelia/garage/kosmiche punk" to "melancholic-hearted autumnal Rickenbacker".

I like both of those aspects of Comet Gain.

[noLooking]

"(assuming this sonic disaster of an album ever saw the inside of a studio)". Heh. Actually I've only got a copy of a copy of that album. Does anyone have it on record? What does that sound like?

I was listening to this the other day. Actually, the mix is a bit spit and sawdust (the vocals are pretty buried) but it doesn't have a layer of sonic murk running across most of the album in the way that "Realistes" does, or songs like "Look At You Now, You're Crying", it's just a bit amateurish. Perhaps one of the characteristics of Comet Gain is that you always remember them sounding worse than they actually do. Though I still say it's a bit pointless doing a fancy double edition of a 50 minute album.

But thanks to the magic of the modern world you can make up your mind yourself. I always regret not buying that cheap vinyl re-issue of Tigertown Pictures when it was out a year or two ago, I think I'd momentarily gone off them a bit and missed it and now it's a bugger to get again.

Also, does anyone have "Fingerprint Ritual"?

I have, but I haven't really given it my full attention yet. I keep getting put off by the long version of "Breaking Open The Head", which is a great song on the album but, shorn of it's chorus, just seems to plod and drag rather than having the kind of pulsing effect I think that they were after. The other songs are pretty good though, especially "Dignify the Signified" or whatever it's called, but I have a tendency to put it on from the start and then not get past the first one.

As regards the style, I loved "Paperback Ghosts" but think that, rather than these more psychedelic stompers, the best alter ego to the current autumnal, Byrdsian feel is found in their faux-Northern Soul style extravaganzas, a la "Kids At The Club" and the like, of which they probably don't do enough. I'd like to hope they haven't abandoned that completely. I wonder if the "Autumnal/Psych" distinction isn't overthinking it a bit and it's more just a mix of loud ones and quiet ones.

Also regarding Stereo Sanctity, I've really enjoyed a lot of those articles as well (though I haven't gone through it all) and I thought that his reason for the coming round to "Paperback Ghosts ("disliking a Comet Gain LP at this stage feels like disowning a family member") was funny and rung very true.

[Ben]

Hello Michael and Andy - just dropping in quickly to say thanks for the links to and quotes from blog etc - I'm genuinely humbled to know that some stuff I wrote resonates with someone to the extent they'd dig it up again a few years later. (It also makes me feel bad that I've only managed about two updates thus far this year.)

Anyway, returning to Comet Gain talk.... a copy of 'Realistes' on vinyl? Yes please! In my alternate world that one's right next to 'A Love Supreme' and 'Revolver' and whatever on some Mojo magazine "146 albums everyone must own on vinyl" list. Just an incredible record - even when I listen to it now, near 15 years after the fact, it still takes the top of my head off every time. Really their peak moment, and I think the production is just perfect - "lo-fi" in the best possible way.

I don't remember describing 'Tigertown Pictures' as a "sonic nightmare", but yeah, nowadays I'd say that's probably a bit harsh. What used to annoy me about it is that I couldn't hear the vocals very well on some of the songs (which is obviously fairly detrimental to a band as lyrically focused as CG), but listening to it this evening it's all perfectly serviceable, and the rough/trebley/spiky guitar sound that used to irk me seems more like an artistic choice (and a good one) than a result of technical limitations. The bits in "When You Come Back I'll Feel.." where both vocalists are belting it out at the top of their voices just-slightly-too-far-from-the-mic whilst the backing nearly falls apart have a raw emotional punch that's impossible to replicate across ten takes in the studio or whatever.

In a way, the crystal clear production on the more recent LPs is probably a big part of why they don't stick with me as strongly as the earlier ones. There's nothing lacking in terms of objective quality, but I suppose the trajectory of my own music taste has just gone in a diametrically opposite direction from that of the band, heading more toward punk and aggression and noise whilst they've settled happily into the big budget indie-pop comfort zone.

Nothing wrong with that if yr in the mood of course, but I still can't help but feel that songs like "Breaking Open The Head" could have benefited hugely from a bit of good ol' scuzz and random noise.... it could have given it the sense of mystery and weird inspiration that that sort of thing needs, whereas with everything clear and out in the open, it never quite manages to overcome the impression of some middle-aged blokes saying to each other, "hey, psychedelia's great, isn't it? I know, let's do a psychedelic song this afternoon..", etc.

Anyway, enough rambling.

(Incidentally, looking at the M'Ladys page, it says they're selling the CG reissues exclusively through their website, which makes me do that whistling-through-my-teeth thing, because I don't like the cost and impracticality of ordering vinyl from across the Atlantic, but guess I might just bite the bullet and do it anyway...)

[noLooking]

In a way, the crystal clear production on the more recent LPs is probably a big part of why they don't stick with me as strongly as the earlier ones. There's nothing lacking in terms of objective quality, but I suppose the trajectory of my own music taste has just gone in a diametrically opposite direction from that of the band, heading more toward punk and aggression and noise whilst they've settled happily into the big budget indie-pop comfort zone.

Nothing wrong with that if yr in the mood of course, but I still can't help but feel that songs like "Breaking Open The Head" could have benefited hugely from a bit of good ol' scuzz and random noise.... it could have given it the sense of mystery and weird inspiration that that sort of thing needs, whereas with everything clear and out in the open, it never quite manages to overcome the impression of some middle-aged blokes saying to each other, "hey, psychedelia's great, isn't it? I know, let's do a psychedelic song this afternoon..", etc.

Weeeeeeell, isn't it that that's just the way the material is tending? My least favourite on the last album was "Confessions of a Daydream", really because it seemed like a genuine attempt to do something a bit more scuzzy and it just sounded kind of forced and old-CG-by-numbers. Whereas at least in the Brydsian mode that most of the album is in, they really seem to be on top songwriting form, 'The Last Love Letter", "Sixteen Oh Four", "Sad Love" are just cracking songs, and very much in the tradition of "Books Of California" and "Don't Fall in Love..." - they could always pull that kind of beauty out if they wanted to and they do it as well as ever now, if not better.

Not that I don't agree with the wider point on the psych stuff (the "Fingerprint Ritual" songs also feel very much more garage-psyche pastiche I think than anything on the album and that's one of the reasons I haven't been bothered with it - it sounds a bit like the shit stuff they left off it), but perhaps it's just best that they concentrate on what they're doing best now. Though obviously it can be hard to let stuff go when you really love a particular thing that a band did and they stop doing it, or at least stop doing it so well.

(Incidentally, looking at the M'Ladys page, it says they're selling the CG reissues exclusively through their website, which makes me do that whistling-through-my-teeth thing...

Oh, fuck that, I'm not paying thirty quid for it. It's probably about time I invested a judicious fiver on eBay for City Fallen Leaves though. One of the joys of coming to Comet Gain late is there's so much still to discover.

[michael]

Before I'd heard "Paperback Ghosts" I wondered if it might sound like "City Fallen Leaves", just because it was recorded at the same place and with the same person, but what it actually sounds much more like I think is the compilation "Sneaky". I like the "Sneaky" version of Comet Gain as much as I like the "Tigertown Pictures" version, partly because that's what Comet Gain sounded like when I first heard them, but I can see how opinions might differ on that. So I like "Paperback Ghosts", although I'm not absolutely convinced by "Confessions of a Daydream".

Going back to those Stereo Sanctity posts, I'd have loved to have seen that show above The Apple Tree in Farringdon in 2008. The mixture of noise and tune here is just great,




(YouTube says the drummer there was Phil Sutton, "Hoffner Burns" from the Sarah/Sam/Jax line-up.)

Andy, "Strength" is another great faux Northern Soul style extravaganza. There was a great video for it as well, but I can't seem to find that now.

[everard]

quick bump re. the m'lady's reissues, pre-orders for which closed and have been re-opened due to pressing delays (but will be available through other places -- well, light in the attic, at least -- not just m'lady's).

SPECIAL DEAL FROM M'LADY'S: if you order one or both of our Comet Gain reissues direct, you'll get a hyper-limited Comet Gain 7" single ("Fists in the Pocket" b/w a cover of Subway Sect's "Chain Smoking" exclusive to this single) that we're pressing bespoke at the request of Stephen Pastel. This is true.

[holyzombiejesus]

Has anyone received their copies of these yet?

[linus]

No, I understand it's in hand, there may be a wait yet but they will be sent out

I don't think the band have had their copies yet