(Original publication date unknown)

There are few artists as expressive as telling a story as Comus. I wrote a bit about it in my review for First Utterance, particularly for their song “Diana,” but it’s true for their entire library (small as it is). Roger Wootton gets incredibly into the macabre stories he tells, yelping with a twisted excitement no matter how dark the subject matter. In “Diana,” you can hear him go into a whisper as Diana is stalked by her attacker as if not to alert her of the man behind her. As he gets closer and begins his attack, he starts shrieking louder and faster to match the intensity of his written words. It’s perfect, and I haven’t heard anyone since as capable of abandoning their ego to explore taboo subjects. There’s nothing quite like Comus, really.

Which is a shame, because Comus had to cut their talent short after pressure from their record label, who demanded them make a more commercial album: To Keep From Crying. To be fair, To Keep From Crying is not nearly as bad as its reputation suggests, and it’s still a solid ’70s folk pop album. Try as they might, Wootton still sounds like a madman, and Bobbie Watson still shrieks like a banshee.

After calling it quits, Comus resurrected after the turn of the century and released Out of the Coma after a resurgence of interest in First Utterance. This was more of a return to form, but it sounds too much like First Utterance stripped of some of its intensity. Though the vocalists remain as expressive as ever, their subject matter is more safe, with mostly vague mystical lyrics instead of ones about, well, torture and murder.

Still, the songs are well done with some beautiful instrumentation and great vocal performances, and I can go for just one First Utterance clone for now because we didn’t get such back then. At the very least, Out of the Coma introduces new jazzy brass into their music—but with little to no affect, and Roger Wootton cleverly replaces his high-pitched yelping with a low growl. Better than no vocal quirks at all, as I’m not surprised he can’t hit those high notes in his old age.

But First Utterance and the non-album songs that were released around the same time are still mind-blowing to me every time I listen to them. What the hell were Comus thinking? Whatever it was, I’m glad they thought of it.

Release Ranking: First Utterance > Out of the Coma > To Keep From Crying

Top Five Songs: “Song to Comus,” “In the Lost Queen’s Eyes,” “The Herald,” “Diana,” “The Return”

Collector’s Notes:

• In 2005, Comus released the Song to Comus: The Complete Collection compilation, which contains First Utterance, To Keep From Crying, a couple non-album tracks from the band’s heyday, and Roger Wootton’s only solo material. For starters, these remasters are the optimal versions of Comus’s albums. The remasters are very tender and don’t raise the volume level that much, offering slightly more clarity at no cost to the dynamics or instruments by compressing or distorting them.
  
  Likewise, it’s not worth fretting over if you have an older CD pressing of First Utterance—they don’t sound much different. However, the non-album tracks included on this anthology are completely essential. Every unique song has Bobbie Watson on vocals, a must-have for anyone who is a fan of “The Herald” (everybody) and wanted to hear more of Comus’s secondary vocalist fronting the music. These songs don’t have the twisted themes of First Utterance, but they still possess the dark atmosphere and intense instrumentation.
• Comus’s only official live album, East of Sweden: Live at the Melloboat Festival 2008, is a completely unnecessary bore with identical, weaker renditions of studio material—but the band’s cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs” deserves praise, as it’s faithful to the original while being reinterpreted in Comus’s manic style.