Written by: Dave Cantrell
When we say we’re “full-on chuffed,” what do we mean exactly? When we say we’re moved by a record in ways we say we can’t articulate, how do we weave our way through the multiple threads webbing their way through everything you’re hearing with enough clarity so that, after a careful listening or two, we actually do arrive at a subtle, intuitive understanding of the what and why this record we’ve just heard to thoroughly, a bit unexpectedly, even, holds us in its clutches? In this case here, with the longstanding long admired London-based band Comet Gain’s latest full-length Letters to Ordinary Outsiders (released June 6th on the unsurpassable Tapete Records), we believe it’s the usual suspects: a poignant, rousing joy, the well-worn so therefore well-loved tropes delivered as if they’ve just been born, the warmth of its tones that sound so effortlessly painted even as they sometimes jar the senses. What we’re really talking about when we say such things as presented up top there is…soul. And by ‘soul’ in this instance we’re not, strictly speaking, talking Smokey Aretha Otis et cetera – though, put a capital ‘S’ on it and, well, that’s a different story, innit? – but, more broadly, that ineffable, intimated quality the presence of which lands under that commonly used utterance ‘we know it when we feel it’ or, more precisely for our purposes here, hear it.
Formed some thirty-three (and a third, maybe?) years ago by David Christian – AKA David Feck and/or David Feck Christian among a dozen or so other iterations – alongside still-current members Ben Phillipson (guitar), co-singer Rachel Evans and keyboardist Anne Laure Guillain and here joined by Clientele bassist James Hornsey and Robin Christian handling vaious means of percussion, the Comet Gain in this current form sounds as crisp and pure and cracklingly sublime as they ever have, qualities driven into the heart on waves of vulnerability, which is to say the ache that often accompanies that aforementioned hard-fought joy.
From its none more Comet Gainesque opener “The Ballad of the Lives We Led” that unspools like a Britain-based Steinbeckian tale of the common man (and woman, as Evans has a mic turn midway through) looking for – and, rather miraculously, finding – grace amid the chaos that just happens to boast a top shelf melody, to the steady explosion of caution-tinged optimism that closes the album in the form of “Maybe One Day It’ll Really Happen” carrying us home under bright, slightly McGuinn-shaped shadows, there’s no place here on Letters that doesn’t revel, however humbly – respectfully, even – in that ‘three chords and the truth’ promise inherent in the veery premise of rock’n’roll. To wit…
There’s “If They Can’t Find the Way Then There’s No Way Out” that comes storming forward at first with a bit of a Gedgeian burst before settling into an elegance wrapped in a horn-parping eloquence – that’d be Sean Reed – and before you know it there it is, a yearning pop swirl of a gem and, well, no surpsise, really, as that’s how this lot works, taking what might be considered common indie currency and converting it into gold.
There’s the subtly packed “Threads” that lopes along with an unassumingness that’ll live in your head for days. There’s the melancholic resignation of the Evans-sung “Yeah, I Know It’s A Wonderful Life, But There’s Always Further You Can Fall” that somehow pulls hope free from the wreckage, dusts it off and in the process endowing despair with a cie la vie shrug of comme si comme çe optimism. There’s the positively buoyant “Do You Remember ‘Lites on the Water’?,” all jukebox-worthy hooks and air-punching spirit that includes lines like “it’s incredible, how we’re still alive / marking out time with these lullabies // how many lives do we have left? / well I haven’t found out yet;” “Buildings”‘ resilient melancholy as Evans sings through an unbowed wave of nostalgia – quite beguiling, that one – the propulsive bash and lash of “Hearts of Scars” that despite its unabating fatalism proves to be as hopeful as it is bracing all of which isn’t to evven mention the inspired closer “Maybe One Day It’ll Really Happen” that spirals ever upward, bringing this correspondent ‘those’ chills the appearance of which has become rarer and rarer as the years race past and for that alone I’m surpassingly happy that these particular Letters landed in my mailbox a month ago or so.
For someone whose output rivals the likes of the late Daniel Johnston it’s really quite amazing how Mr Christian, both solo and with his trusty Comet Gain crew, manages to not just maintain a consistency of quality to which a vanishingly few others can lay claim but does so with an enthusiasm that borders on – if not outright crashes straight into – pure invincibility. Trust us. If any of the foregoing references and inferences perked up your curiosity there is zero doubt that you do not want to miss this one.
