Comet

Chris Harford's first release following his major-label debut Be Headed (and subsequent drop from Elektra Records) is a collection of takes that mostly pre-date that album. Comet is a quiet, droning disc of gentle ballads strummed on heavily filtered guitars and sung in Harford's high and affected Billy Corgan-meets-Thom Yorke voice (topped, of course, with a large dollop of echo). Harford's Wall of Sound is in full mushy effect, simultaneously creating a unified sound for the disc, but also muting players' individual contributions (including Robin ZRM's atmospheric accordion on "Milestone"). Like Harford's other discs, the album is capped with a finale in the grandest rock & roll sense of the word. "Second Guessing" builds to arena rock proportions by its end. For the most part, though, the album is mostly free of big rock songs and, therefore, mostly free of big rock clichés that Harford has embraced on other discs.