City Fallen Leaves

Since the band split in half after the release of 1997's Magnetic Poetry, Comet Gain have been releasing raw and vital records steeped in leader David Christian's actual, angry, and true poetry and the group's raw and alive sound. True classics to anyone who thinks the idea of Dexy's Midnight Runners, the Pastels, the Television Personalities, Northern soul, garage rock, punk rock, and countless indie heroes known and unknown thrown into a blender and recorded as loudly and crudely as possible sounds like the best idea ever, Tigertown Pictures and Realistes were indie pop/rock at its most real and unpolished, yet somehow also at its most accomplished and important. City Fallen Leaves carries on with the same zeal for reality and unconcern for anything but making the best record they can. As with previous Comet Gain records, it alternates powerful, hard-charging anthems like "Fist in Pocket," "Bored Roar," the savage "Daydream Scars," "Just One More Summer Before I Go," and "The Ballad of a Mixtape" led by Christian's street snarl of a voice, Rachel Evans' insecure warble, Christian and Jon Slade's slashing guitars, and M.J. Taylor's simple but rock-solid drumming with restrained and melancholy ballads like the achingly elegiac "Days I Forgot to Wrote Down," "Seven Sisters to Silverlake," "Draw a Smile Upon an Egg," and "Fingernailed for You," which feature the tough but tender side of the band. They also stretch their sound a bit with sweet vocal harmonies here and there, a couple of near-spoken word tracks, and a generally cleaner sound that harks back to the sound of the band just before everyone deserted. They also show some artistic growth on tracks like the arty and dramatic "This English Melancholy," the lilting Go-Betweens-inspired "Your Robert!," which features lovely viola playing by Alison Cotton, and the epic closer "Nameless," an ode to bands and music and loving them with an undyingly independent soul that builds in intensity both lyrically and musically until it becomes the story and the soul of the band laid bare in six minutes. Intense and beautiful, it is a fitting end to a record that lives up to the full meaning of both of those words. City Fallen Leaves isn't just Comet Gain's best album yet, it is their most musically impressive, lyrically challenging, and satisfying outing, and it gives a glimpse of a possible future where they could make more polished and sedate albums without sacrificing an ounce of their tenacity and fervor.