Comets on Fire - Blue Cathedral

Genre rock Publisher Sub Pop External Links Sub Pop

It takes a lot of concentration to play simple music; it takes a belief in the ritualistic aspects of what you're doing. The music found on Blue Cathedral is simple-- standard mutant post-blues/surf-music riffs (OK, post-Haight? post-Hawkwind? post-Blue Cheer? Where do you think all those lysergic San Francisco bands got the raw material for their music, forty years ago?) played over and over, some loose but not jazzy drumming, and a lot of stratospheric guitar (and sax). And vocals, although I have absolutely no idea what the guy is singing about--I don't listen to music through headphones myself. Even then, I don't think I could understand too much of Ethan Miller's insanely echoplexed vocals, and anyway this is an album on which the instrumentals are the thing. Let me mention the drummer's name--Utrillo Kushner.

I guess the best way to approach this is to listen to it as if it were jazz--concentrate on the repetition. Since there's virtually nothing of any real harmonic or even rhythmic interest here, I don't know how else to appreciate it. There are a few moments where saxophone comes into the picture and I think of early Pere Ubu played sideways; "Pussy Foot the Duke" sounds like Comets on Fire have a sense of humor--it's a goofy little piece with a nice cheap organ sound, and it's probably the most interesting piece of pure music here. There are moments when you think, "hmm, this could be even more successful if only they had paid more attention to making it harmonically and rhythmically interesting, surprising, because then they could've gotten the drummer to roll around as he does here and the added stratospheric guitars and insanely echoplexed vocals would've perhaps been thrown in greater relief." But that's a pop fan talking. And I'm enough of a pop fan to realize that what they're after is a re-creation of classic psychedelica and to say that they pull it off.

So I don't know, this is pretty nice--I find myself smiling as I listen, and if these days I indulged in the various substances sold by my local operating out of a brown El Camino, ask for Clark, near the swingset in the back parking lot of the First Baptist Church, I would probably smile even more. For this pop fan it works best in small doses. To the credit of Comets on Fire, they do keep things fairly concise. Nice and speedy, barely turgid at all. So that's good; still, I am not totally sure I know why they play this music, or what it is they wish to get across. Beyond re-creating psychedelica--sure, I'm a fan of early Floyd, I like some Quicksilver, Julian Cope, etc. There are two songs that have "whiskey" as part of the title. As pure sensation it has its moments, just as many recordings by out-and-out jam bands do. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish more actually happened here--my belief in the ritualistic aspect of what they do comes and goes, you see.