When: 7.00pm on Tuesday 30 August 2011
Where: The Roadhouse, 8 Newton Street, Manchester M1 2AN
We’re delighted to be back at the Roadhouse for the first time in over 18 months, with one of our favourite British bands.
Led by songwriter David Feck, Comet Gain have released a string of critically acclaimed records on Kill Rock Stars, Track & Field and What’s Your Rupture? – albums such as Tigertown Pictures, Réalistes, City Fallen Leaves and 2008’s singles collection Broken Record Prayers establishing the band as one of the most fearlessly passionate and fiercely intelligent British bands around. The current line up comprises David Charlie Feck (vocals, guitar), ex-Huggy Bear bassist Jon Slade (guitar), Rachel Evans (vocals), Kay Ishikawa (bass), ex-Morrissey/The Meteors drummer Woodie Taylor (percussion), Anne Laure Guillain (keyboards), and Ben Phillipson of The Eighteenth Day Of May (guitar).
Unapologetically literate and emotional, Comet Gain seek out inspiration as much in the music of girl-group era pop, heartfelt Americana, British post-punk and 1960s psychedelia, as in the words and images of the beat poets and in the cinema of both the British and French new-wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s. From Goffin and King, The Modern Lovers, The Seeds, Dylan, The Impressions, Big Star, Julian Cope and the Flying Nun and Creation labels, to Kerouac, Pynchon, Shelagh Delaney and Godard, the band are influenced by an incessant drive to ‘distill the spirit and those moments of musical defiance… recalling old stories of friends, of being lonely and what kept you sane, watching old movies like the kitchen sink English films and early 1970s American ones, re-reading the beat writers… finding a common ground, taking a deep breath and then picking up our guitars and singing these songs.’
Comet Gain insist on locating and articulating the romance and the heartbreak that permeate and terrorise the everyday, while refusing to slip into sentiment or mawkishness. The aesthetic they have made their own has chimed with and galvanized a slew of iconic bands and musicians; from artists like The Make-Up, The Yummy Fur, Jens Lekman and Herman Dune, to a younger generation of DIY musicians like The Cribs, Let’s Wrestle, Male Bonding, Love Is All, Veronica Falls and Crystal Stilts, Comet Gain’s influence remains a traceable and tangible thing.
Support comes in the form of lounge-gaze-krautpop band Help Stamp Out Loneliness, who formed during the sabbatical of Language of Flowers, plus The ABC Club, who one reviewer recently described as ‘existing in the space between The Smiths and The Strokes’.
This show is a co-promotion with Underachievers Please Try Harder.
Tickets are available from the bar, Common (both no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk, Ticketweb.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.