Renascent
2006
Fiction
About This Album
Fiction's lightness in relation to Sleep No More does not come as much of a surprise. Perhaps only a song-by-song cover of Nico's Marble Index would've topped Sleep No More terms of bleakness, so it didn't really require a conscious effort on the part of the Comsat Angels to use some brighter tones and leave a little room to breathe on their third album. In fact, Fiction begins with a song that's as much an affirmation in "After the Rain," a fragile, resilient opener that applies the band's long-established sense of economy with the kind of sprightful mallet work that could've been learned from Japan's Tin Drum. (Another aspect that indicates the band might've been listening to Tin Drum is evident in the rubbery, slithering quality in some of Kevin Bacon's basslines.) The abstract propellant bounce in "Not a Word," "Zinger," "Birdman," and the especially stripped-down "More" -- which is powered almost entirely by Mik Glaisher's short-step marching beat -- recalls the poppier moments of Waiting for a Miracle without retracing them. "Now I Know," "Pictures," and "What Else?!" are bracing extensions of the irreparable-relationship songs on Waiting for a Miracle and Sleep No More, using slightly different shadings and containing line after line of Stephen Fellows' quote-worthy lyrics.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 and 13)

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