Comet Gain
Issue #26
City Fallen Leaves (Kill Rock Stars)
By John Everhart
Published: December 1st, 2005 | 12:22pm
Comet Gain renewed my faith in the redemptive power of rock music. When David Feck sang, “The look on a young girl’s face when she turns on her first record player / I want that / I need that,” on Realistes, it was a revelation. The track, and entire record, captured the elusive, mystical power of rock music. The resilience and the desire to not lose touch with the imagination of youth feels so mundane that few pop fans would deign to even admit to caring about them.
While Realistes galvanized, their follow-up City Fallen Leaves is the inevitable come down: a more schizoid, contemplative record. After the torrid blast of the brilliant opener “The Fists in the Pocket,” the acoustic lament of “Days I Forgot to Write Down” is maudlin and reflective, while the vignette, “Just One More Summer Before I Go,” is a sweet rush of C86-style pop. The record gets fitful and rough intermittently, most impressively on the droning cacophony of the Fall-like “The Punk Got Fucked.”
Leaves closes with an untitled elegy to both indie-rock and the innocence it symbolizes to Feck. Shuffling along with a gorgeous “New Slang”-esque grace, Feck fondly recalls a “stereo as cheap as it takes,” before confessing “something is missing.” Name-checking heroes like the Go-Betweens and the Chills, Feck seems to be subconsciously validating his own significance in an indie scene that perhaps never gave him his due. The denouement comes with his pronouncement that “We found the sound of the underground / We felt so proud to be underground.” On the superb City Fallen Leaves, this is the sound of a band growing up gracefully, never sacrificing any of its passion or dignity.
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