Comet Gain - City Fallen Leaves

On its sixth LP, Britain's Comet Gain attests to the fact that it deplores cohesion in an album, taking unexpected twists and turns throughout the record's fifteen tracks. Led by David Feck (he's the brains behind the project), the players on this particular venture include ex-Huggy Bear guitarist Jon Slade (guitars, piano, etc), Holly Golightly member (and apparently, also a Morrissey collaborator) M.J. Taylor on drums. Kay Ishikawa and Rachel Evans (bass and vocals, respectively) put their time in with Ray-K-Ray. Where much of the record relies on joyous, above-standard fare pop, alternating randomly between male and female vocals, all the while the band is inserting various nuances (all those keyboard thingies--farfisa, rhodes, organ, plus various strings and lapsteel) to pep things up. By the third track, "Daydream Scars," the band is shunning the light-hearted melodies in favor of harder-hitting power pop/punk. And by the time the disc reaches "The Punk Got Fucked," the sound has expanded to some oddball combination of The Modern Lovers and...Pere Ubu, maybe? In between those last two mentioned, though, you get the lilting, keyboard-laden "Seven Sisters to Silverlake" and the sparser "This English Melancholy." Post-intermission (starting with track 9, that is), the album delivers its gem. "Just One More Summer Before I Go" could have been a Chisel tune, setting a yearning chorus to an upbeat body. "Your Robert!" is one going out to The Go-Betweens' Robert Forster; the album closing "The Ballad of a Mix Tape" lets Feck flex his indie intellectual muscle, remembering "the lost bands that never had a chance" and referencing The Go-Betweens again, along with The Supremes and The Dils, showing the breadth of influence this band can pull from. There's no particular style the band follows on the record, but there's not really any holding back, either. Whether it's the group's strongest effort or not is irrelevant; City Fallen Leaves either takes the cake as the best or secures Comet Gain as a considerably great band. Or maybe, both. [www.killrockstars.com]