The Comsat Angels: Chasing Shadows

I like to think that the folk at Sun 13 are fairly forward looking people in terms of keeping up to date with new music. Generally, I find it enough of a challenge to keep up to date with the tremendous amount of new music that gets released to find the time to backtrack to records I already know off by heart. However, there are just a few bands that I find myself returning to time and time again, despite the passing of the years and the familiarity of their music.

The Comsat Angels are such a band.

In fact there are times when I listen to almost nothing but The Comsat Angels for days at a time. To me they are a band who have never fallen out of favour, of fashion or of mind. Their records are towering testaments to their talents, as musicians, as songwriters and as standard bearers for the power of music to evoke, innovate and captivate.

If all the above sounds like hyperbole, I suppose it comes down to the idea of cult bands, which is unfortunately what The Comsat Angels have become. Cult bands tend to be those that aren’t as widely loved as they should be, but those who love them love them almost beyond reason. This is where I sit with The Comsat Angels.

I first came across the band as support to Siouxsie and the Banshees at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre in March 1981and again at the same venue a few months later supporting U2. At the time of that first Comsats gig, The Banshees were probably my favourite band in the world, but even so their support band came perilously close to blowing them off stage, a feat they easily achieved later with U2. 

In between these gigs I bought their double 7” EP, Do the Empty House and their second album, Sleep No More, two incredible slices of post-punk genius, and that was it: I was hooked. I saw them a few more time in various places over the years, always awaiting the breakthrough that would send them into the mainstream and to headlining the venues I had previously seen them in as support, but for some reason, the breakthrough didn’t happen.

It is impossible to explain why this might be the case. They had a major record label behind them, they were getting good gigs and positive reviews but… sometimes the world is like that. Sometimes the cream doesn’t rise to the top, sometimes the bands that should achieve the higher echelons of fame and fortune simply don’t. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to this pattern other than luck. Perhaps it was partly due to the fat that The Comsat Angels did not fit neatly into any of the tribes that seemed so important at the time. Eventually the band split up, the plateauing lack of success being one of the reasons.

Sun 13 – Lost Albums

The record that was supposedly earmarked to bring them this success was sixth album, The Cutting Edge, released back in 1986. The band had signed to Island Records, helped by label mate and champion of the band, Robert Palmer, who was involved as executive producer on the album and co-vocalist on You’ll Never Know. The Cutting Edge is more than capable of fulfilling its aim of tipping Comsat Angels into the mainstream, it is that rarest of things, an absolutely faultless record that still stands up as such almost 40 years later.

Island and The Comsat Angels promoted the album well, including a rare TV appearance when they headlined an edition of Channel 4’s The Tube, but none of this seemed to impact the general public and Chasing Shadows’ expected trajectory stalled. Which is a shame on more than one level, partly because Chasing Shadows deserves to be famous and exulted, but also because it is a record well suited to success, a record that should be looked back at in years to come as the moment one of the country’s finest bands came of age and took their rightful place at the top table.

But, although The Comsat Angels never achieved their deserved levels of success, they have left in their wake as impressive a body of work as you are likely to hear. While Sleep No More is widely regarded as their masterpiece, Chasing Shadows is for me the band at their absolute peak.

Chasing Shadows opening track, The Thought That Counts, starts with what sounds like cellos, giving the opening few seconds almost a baroque feel, before Kevin Bacon (not that one) and Mik Glaisher come in on bass and drums, respectively. Straight away, it is clear that Kevin Moloney has done an incredible job on production, the drum sound is superb; loud, clear and well separated; while the bass is upfront and carries the song’s initial melody easily. Stephen Fellows adds his vocals it is clear that he has never been in better voice than on Chasing Shadows.

There is no trace of guitar on the song until the chorus, when Fellows strums a languid chord at the beginning of each line, followed by some clever harmonics. Fellows’ approach to the guitar is one of The Comsat Angels’ many strengths, never clichéd or the victim of any rockist habits, his is an inventive, often minimalist approach that reveals him to be one of post-punk’s finest guitarists. A musician friend of mine once told me that the art of playing guitar is knowing when not to play guitar, an insight that Fellows uses to great effect.

Without resorting to bombast or over instrumentation, The Thought That Counts is a powerful driving song that still manages to focus on subtlety.

Next track, The Cutting Edge, is reflective of changes in the Comsat’s sound compared to their earlier works, with piano replacing Andy Peake’s more usual synth sounds. It is a sound that suits them well and the piano is at the forefront of more than one song on Chasing Shadows. With a fine walking bassline and gentle piano lines, The Cutting Edge is an evocative and haunting song that will, if I may slip into the language of the times for a moment, hit you in the feels.

The song broods and seems to concern itself about a break-up. The lyrics are presented as being sung by the person behind a break-up, who seems both impressed and surprised by the action he has taken and also guilty at the consequences of what he has done. The Comsat Angels natural inclination towards melancholy and Fellows superb singing make the song relatable to anyone who has had their heart broken in the past.

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Under The Influence is perhaps a more traditional Comsats song, again employing their habit most of the song being bass, drums and keyboards, until shards of crystalline guitar burst into occasional life for the chorus. The instrumentation of the track is quite sparse but still sounds full, largely thanks to Glaisher’s drums and Moloney’s production. It’s a difficult track to pull off, but one that Under The Influence masters with ease.

Again, credit goes to Fellow’s unconventional and inventive guitar work. Most of the song has no guitar and, when it is in the mix, consists of intermittent strummed chords and effects covered noise, almost like a more melodic Keith Levine adding atmosphere rather than melody.

The guitar is featured more heavily on next song, Carried Away, but even here it is heavily dampened and is a long way from being the music’s main feature. Carried Away is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. There is a yearning at the song’s heart where the singer wishes to be in a different place, whether that place is physical or metaphorical. There may even be some autobiography involved in the lyrics as Fellows starts to dream “Of a place, very far from here. where there’s more to life than trying to make ends meet.”

It’s a song so full of longing that it’s easy for the listener to project their own feelings into its lyrics, a song that we can feel was written for us and the pain we sometimes go through. Every note seems perfectly phrased and positioned for maximum emotional impact and when Fellows sings, “Like a ship out on the ocean, sometimes I just wish we could be carried away”, our collective hearts break in unison.

After such an emotional high water-mark, next track, You’ll Never Know, steps up the pace a little while still focusing on a natural longing, as Fellows sings, “I’d sell my soul to get that moment under my control, but you’ll never know”. It’s a more immediately impactful song than we have heard so far, wasting little time to bring in the full band. Robert Palmer himself appears halfway through the song to take over the vocals. This is how Comsat fandom can affect people, with Palmer compelled to promote and assist the band and super fan Mark Kermode describing them as not only as his favourite act of all time but the greatest band in the world.

Palmer’s spot on the song is a welcome curio, it is not needed, but it does add a cachet of some sort to proceedings.

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Lost Continent continues the pace with a driving drum beat and some more harmonics from Fellows. Again the Comsat’s instinctive and clever use of space is evident as the bass and guitar leave plenty of room for the song and yet still manage to make it all sound effortlessly epic. The breakdown with bass drums and keyboards is particularly effective. There is an easy intellectual approach here, with song structures and guitar atmospherics being well used. I would love to have seen the recording process behind all this, to see how it was all put together in the studio, how the pieces of the puzzle were constructed and fit together.

Flying Dreams is constructed around a simple but hugely catchy drumbeat that runs through the whole song with a few variations on the theme. Andy Peake is given further chance to shine and indulge in some jazzy piano stylings. There is a claim to be made that Chasing Shadows is to some degree Peake’s album, as his piano and keyboard washes are essential to the album’s effect and appeal.

The song breaks down around the halfway mark, only to build and climb back up to its previous heights before it powers to an end, carried by the now thunderous drums.

Chasing Shadows perhaps saves the best for last and finishes with the stripped back perfection of Pray For Rain, a lush piano ballad that showcases Peake and Fellows at the absolute peak of their powers. Over a reflective piano line, Fellows sings some of the finest lyrics he ever committed to tape. Not for the first time, he uses rain as a metaphor, but where it was previously used as a symbol of sadness or turmoil (“The sun will shine again after the rain”), here heat is the issue and rain is needed to cool things down and to put out the conflagration.

It is perhaps best to just include the lyrics here, as any attempt I can make to discuss them further will pale next to the impact they can have on their own.

Too close for me, this kind of killing heat
The burning looks before the fun begins
This kind of night leaves tracks across your mind
This kind of day is better left behind

When every word just fans the flames
All you can do is pray for rain

I met my match, but then the fire spread out of control
and now there’s not much left
Don’t you know that no one ever wins, so take my hand
But don’t say anything

When every word just fans the flames
All you can do is pray for rain

And let it fall
So cool and clear
Still this troubled water
Drive the fever out of here

When every word just fans the flames
All you can do is pray for rain

And that is where Chasing Shadows leaves us, drained and emotional.  It is an album that touches perfection, and god knows there are few of those around. And this is why, in the midst of trying to keep up with the unending flow of new music, I sometimes take a time out and just focus on The Comsat Angels for a while. Everything I need is there, food for the soul, balm for the mind.

Chasing Shadows stands as a peerless work, a band with almost no equal, creating the album they were perhaps destined to make – a 100 per cent, 24 carat classic. That most of the public missed out on this is to their detriment, but for those of us who love The Comsat Angels, Chasing Shadows is ours to treasure.