The Bowery Presents

Music Hall of Williamsburg upcoming shows

Comet Gain

Crystal Stilts / Cold Cave

Venue:
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Date:
Sun 4/12
Notes:
18+
Doors: 7:30 PM / Show: 8:30 PM
$13 advance / $15 day of show
Tickets
Comet Gain
official website
myspace
Since 1992, beloved British indie act Comet Gain has been rattling the most obscurant of cages in the service of youth culture sympathy, a staccato stream of iconographic missives to "the kids" as they walk this Earth, cool to the touch and sometimes shaken up inside. If the group hasn't become a household name, it certainly hasn't vanished from sight, even throughout lineup changes, label jumping, and decidedly non-careerist behavior that would have felled thousands of bands in their position. Leader David Feck's positions on how to operate his endeavor run counter-clockwise to just about any other band on a timeline this extended; perhaps no greater evidence of his theories can be found than on Broken Record Prayers, featuring 20 songs culled from singles, compilations, Peel Sessions, and new material recorded between 1997 and 2007. If you've ever wondered what kind of band puts A-list material on a limited-to-500 single that's destined to sit under
somebody's bed, wonder no more.

And yet that's the beauty of the Comet Gain machine, and of Broken Record Prayers as a whole. Here, collected, are pages of a scrapbook of eternal youth, the perfect songs to connect the sentiments on a mixtape. Here's to sitting alone in your room, certain that no one else in the world understands what you're feeling until you drop the needle on the record, and all of your colliding thoughts are spelled out for you. Here's to the unsung and the underheard, to the doing it for your own reasons. Here's to decoding the semiotic clues within, and learning all there is to know about the British New Wave. Here's a chance to know what the lucky misfits and clued-in outcasts have known all along, that the masterpieces are in the margins, that each record has a full story to tell, and the singles just have to get there faster than the albums. Here's to speed, to melody, to soul in all of its incarnations. From the elegy of "Jack Nance Hair," written for Heavenly's Mathew Fletcher in the tragic wake of his death, to the clenched fist immediacy of "Beautiful Despair," to the Motown-via-Kirsty MacColl cover of Deena Barnes northern soul ballad "If You Ever Walk Out of My Life" to the dance flights and high energy of "Orwell Liberty Dance," here's to figuring it out on your own, with a little help from people thousands of miles away. Most importantly, here's to your newest obsession, in songs that age without so much as a wrinkle or a fallen eyelash.

What's Your Rupture? is proud to present Broken Record Prayers on compact disc, digital download, and double-vinyl formats, featuring six unreleased tracks (two of which, "Love Without Lies" and "Books of California," will be issued, for completists, as a limited edition seven-inch single). Comet Gain celebrated the release of *Broken Record Prayers* this fall with an extremely rare visit to the United States, where they will embark on a week-long tour of the East Coast.

"*[Comet Gain] retained its ethos … a ragged soul/punk/country/mod/whatever takes [David Feck's] fancy vision, one as influenced by novels, graphic comics and the auteur aesthetic as by music. I hear echoes of other people in that the music; Robyn Hitchcock, Bob Dylan especially, much more so than the oft-cited Dan Treacy and Kevin Rowland. I saw a great documentary on Robyn Hitchcock before I left the UK, and it occurred [sic] to me that these two very different individuals have the same wonderful creative urge and passion which will never diminish, no matter how old and cantankerous [sic] they might become. And it's what we all need – a bit of inspiration in these plastic times … Even when they play off key and out of tune, which really isn't that often, they're still worth a hundred other groups. In an age when so much seems superficial they are, for better or worse, the last word in honesty and integrity.*" – Phil Sutton, original Comet Gain drummer
Crystal Stilts
myspace
It's no big secret that Brooklyn has been the home for some mighty happening music lately, but there are few bands with as unique a vibe and presence as Crystal Stilts. Their self-released single and 12" EP won them rave reviews everywhere from Pitchfork to Stereogum, and the blogoshpere has been humming about them for months. And now we are very proud to bring you Alight of Night, an album that more than delivers on the promise of those early singles. A remarkably graceful collision of such disparate references as The Velvet Underground, Red Crayola, Joy Division, The Pin Group and early Jesus & Mary Chain, Crystal Stilts' spectral avant-garage is both classic and totally new. It's dark and melodic, deep and yet somehow still "pop" at the same time. There is some serious sonic alchemy going on here, resulting in Alight of Night being one of the most interesting records we've heard in ages.

Crystal Stilts have created one of the most perfectly formed reconciliations of classic rock swagger and zoned dreampop." - The Wire

"If Crystal Stilts weren’t one of Brooklyn’s most hotly tipped exports before, there’s no doubt they will be now." - Exclaim

"...easily the most exhilarating rock 'n' roll record to emerge in 2008..." - Prefix

"These are weird pop songs you clap your hands along to. They pile a rockabilly riff and nursery school melodies onto a revved-up bass line and sweet surfy 60s organ riff on top of minimalist percussion."
- Pitchfork

"...one of the year's best albums..." - Brooklyn Vegan

"Quite simply, Alight Of Night is one of the most breathtaking records these ears have been partial to in a long while, and even if Crystal Stilts never make another record, their legacy is assured."
- Drowned In Sound

“it has that classic first ten Creation releases era sound mixed with a drummer raised on a diet of only Moe Tucker and laura from the shop assistants." - Rough Trade
Cold Cave
myspace
Cold Cave are an experimental electronic pop group from Philadelphia and New York City who make melodic synthscapes with jackhammer beats. They acknowledge the dark roots of synthesizer music as well as its potential for making the brightest pop with their hard songs celebrating the contradictory beauty of the human condition.


As with their ancestors, for Cold Cave the synthesizer is as much about mayhem as it is melody. It is a means of conveying, via dissonance, ideas about disturbance and decay as effectively as the harshest guitar rock. It comes as no surprise to learn that mainman Wesley Eisold is a writer with a past in hardcore punk and noise bands. Caralee McElroy has spent the past few years performing and recording with the acclaimed Xiu Xiu. Manhattan-based Dominick Fernow is known for for performing as the noise group Prurient, and as the owner of the NYC record store and label Hospital Productions.

Cold Cave strive for balance, between the ugly and the beautiful, between rupture and rapture. The songs on Cold Cave's debut album Love Comes Close have an immediacy that belies thought-provoking titles like "The Laurels of Erotomania" and "The Trees Grew Emotions And Died". In this way they mark that transitional moment when synthesizer music went from a subversive device for sound collagists to a serious commercial force. They are cerebral and savage, yet sweet and seductive.

And their mainman Wesley Eisold is an absolute new young god of nihilism and despair. He says things such as, "I couldn't understand why people were wearing watches, because they seemed like hourglasses of death, keeping track of how much time was running out". He talks of his "absolute fixation with nostalgia and the idea of people and loves that never happened, so much that I can't function properly with the people in my actual life". And in two pithy sentences - "I dread clubs but I love the music they play in them," and "I find it all so disheartening, what we hope to find when we leave our homes," - he brilliantly captures Cold Cave's aesthetic: the Morrissey of "How Soon Is Now" wailing over Nitzer Ebb beats.

According to Eisold, if anything, their music reflects what it feels like to live in the present. Eisold, whose baritone is as rich and resonating as that of Phil Oakey, Nick Cave or Iggy Pop, says "Of course we love the lineage of the genre, early experiments with machines to convey human emotion; the marriage between pop and industrial music. At the time it was documenting the early stages of a new world, and we are recording what it feels like to be alive in that world."

When asked whether there is a set of guiding principles at work here, a Cold Cave aesthetic that runs from the artwork to the music, he answers: "We spend a lot of thought choosing what we do. The artwork is as imperative as the music. It is the only imagery attached to the recording. We judge books by covers everyday and it is my hope to have the sleeves represent the emotion, or lack of, in the music."

He concedes that even though there are few explicit references to the heart of darkness on Love Comes Close, there are hints in the language used in the song titles at depravity and desolation. And he agrees that this makes Cold Cave heirs to the synthpop noir of New Order, Throbbing Gristle, Soft Cell and Muslimgauze.
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