Best New Music

Comet Gain Howl of the Lonely Crowd- Fortuna Pop!/What's Your Rupture

Over the years I have heard wild and varied rumors about Comet Gain. A failed US tour canceled the night before leaving, culminating in the resulting aborted but finished album to later only come out as a cd with little promotion; drinking, excess, rock... A lot of things that one doesn't typically think of when thinking of indie pop that at times verges on twee. Certainly there has been those who have said that Comet Gain is dead; or dying.

The speculation of the death of Comet Gain have been greatly exaggerated. The first chords of opening track ‘Clang of the Concrete Swans’ swell with a swaggering gait, an ode to the disenfranchised sets the tone for the first side of the album. Like the best Comet gain songs, it’s a impassioned plea of desire ending with the refrain: “Let their howling hearts be heard.” It is in this instance that Comet Gain define thier pop-magnificence, a harrowing swan song if the idea of the death of the band was in fact rooted in truth. Thankfully, it is not.

‘An Arcade From the Warm Rain That Falls’ throws a little bit of soul into the mix further exploring a common trope of the band: the futility of modern life. Unlike their earlier works, Howl of the Lonely Crowd, swells with instrumentation making a full-sounding record; this is not to say that their sparse pop-statements disappear in the mix. It is still clearly a Comet Gain record.

While reviews of their live shows over the last few years might have been disjointed, it is clear that Comet Gain can come up with an album easily as good as anything in the upper levels of the indie pop cannon.