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Review: 'Christian,David & The Pinecone Orchestra'
'For Those We Met On The Way'   

-  Label: 'Tapete Records'
-  Genre: 'Rock' -  Release Date: '19.11.21.'

Our Rating:
This is David Christian from Comet Gain's first solo album that he's recorded since re-locating to France. He has roped in several members of Comet Gain as well as members of Herman Dune and Teenage Fanclub among others to help create a rather wonderful and melancholic album.

The album opens with In My Hermit Hours that sets out the albums stall nicely as being somewhere between the sound of The Jacobites In Robespierre's Basement and Nikki Sudden's The Last Bandit album and yes it is every bit as good as those two classic Nikki Sudden albums, this is rueful and has delicious backing vocals as well as a wonderful organ and piano parts a great song to lock yourself away too, as David examines the depths of alcoholism.

Goodbye Teenage Blue as the lyrics would have it, is a sad sack serenade and has sharp witted lyrics flying at you, as that orchestra of broken hopes, provides a perfect backing as you turn your life around ready for the Howling Good Times to come.

Holloway Sweethearts sounds like a song for the sort of girl you'd meet at the Buffalo Bar or maybe at the club night they had after gigs at The Garage when I saw Comet Gain playing there all those years ago, this is a gentle piano ballad that hasn't got the Joe Meek kitchen sink on it.

When I Called Their Name They'd Faded Away is a list of the things that he misses about the partner he's no longer with, redolent with the fading memories and the baleful backing works perfectly to wring the emotional content out further.

Dream A Better Me falls somewhere between Nikki Sudden and John Felice & The Lowdowns although this isn't as drug addled as that might suggest, but it's every bit as good a song as that pair are capable of with David trying to improve himself without the aid of a life coach.

On The Last Day (We Spend Together) is the albums big tearjerker as he sings of a relationship ending and trying to move on. It's plaintive and sparse until the band fully come in near the end to soundtrack your departure.

Lockets, Drop-outs and Dragnets a song about Coney Hatch Lane and the weird goings on along that road in North London as it runs from Muswell Hill to New Southgate, I love the imagery in this song even if it makes me think of saying goodbye to mum just before she died in a care home on Coney Hatch Lane, so I have my own phantoms haunting that particular road as I wallow in the majestic side of this song.

Pay me. Later, Coco + Dee seems to be looking at the modern idea of paying it forward mixed with the typical Music bizz attitude that anything you record you'll only get paid for later, much much later.

As they try to stay the course and not get totally lost at sea.

See You In Almost Sunshine is slow ruminative and rather tender look at how we are all meant to grow up and become serious at some point with heavenly angel style backing vocals and a very Last Bandits feel to the music and David's vocal delivery.

I Used To Make Drawings has David wondering why he didn't become an artist rather than a musician, should he get his canvas back out and figure out if he prefers pastels to oil or watercolor, or with an album as good as this should we just encourage him to continue making music.

The Ballad For the Button Downs is a great anthem for the downtrodden and those in need of super sharp lyrics about immaculate losers and there fabulous record collections, this could easily be on repeat for an hour or two and I'd still be finding more in both the music and the lyrics that should in a sane world be getting massive radio airplay.

Mum and Dad's And Other Ghosts closes the album with a slow rumination of the memories of advice given to you by your parents and how that advice's meaning might change as you get older and understand the world differently.

Find out more at https://www.tapeterecords.de/artists/david-christian/ https://www.facebook.com/thecometgain



  author: simonovitch

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