The Comet

Reviews are Straight Down On This Side
Tip of the Day
If your ears are ringing after a show, then you have damaged your hearing. Whether you're listening to a band or playing in a band, it's not worth it to lose the ability to hear early in life. Ear plugs are inexpensive, get some.
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Who We Are
Ello,
This is Fran. I'll be your friendly editorius maximus familiaris at The Comet. Here, we primarily do song reviews and show previews plus we broadcast great music to the world in our podcast. The Cometcast Podcast receives over 14,000 listens each month and is still growing.
RECENT REVIEWS
The Retrofits CD-Away From Here
Written by Fran-For Performer Mag
Founded by Jake Oken-Berg, who in 2002 at the age of 19 ran for Mayor of Portland (and received 27% of the vote), and George McClearly, who was one of the nation..s leading high school runners, the Retrofits arrive both politically and physically fit. Adding to the band..s type A personality are three more over-achievers: Darin Wirth (bass), Brud Giles (Drums), and multi-instrumentalist Jason Barlow, who was the only veteran musician in his High School biology class. 2010 is Portland..s next mayoral race, but Oken-Berg shouldn..t be looking for work by then. Their debut CD Away From Here should help move The Retrofits toward wherever they want to head.
Acoustic instrumentation and poignant vocalization support the main planks in the band..s musical platform. With a sound refined from emotionally elevating musical topographies uniting trickling piano, ascending violin, air-filled acoustic and electric guitars and captivating melodies, The Retrofits new 12-song CD produces an indie pop sound that may have spawned in the same ocean as the Fray..s
(Read the rest in Performer Magazine )
Throwback Suburbia CD-Four Play
Written by Fran-For Performer Mag
Throwback Suburbia's first show was just over a year ago in February 2006, but in the short span of time since then the band has managed to cover a wide swath of musical turf, performing to full capacity crowds and securing radio airplay along the West Coast. Possessing production credits for the likes of David Bowie and The Cure to name a few, producers Mark Plati and Tom McKay were back and forth between New York and Portland working on Throwback Suburbia's new four-song EP, Four Play. Joining the project's high-profile roster is mastering engineer and recent Grammy nominee Greg Calbi, who has worked with some of the most influential and legendary names in rock 'n' roll. The result is an explosion of prodigious power pop marked by commanding performances and arrangements on an EP that sticks to the intelligent side of the brain while keeping the pleasure side entirely entertained.
(Read the rest in Performer Magazine )
Silversafe
..Direct, hard hitting, modern rock too good to be locked away, Silversafe..s combination of explosive power chords, surprising transitions and feverish vocals put the shine on a label-ready sound...
Dan Reed "The Rush" Song Review
Charged by the power of love and the knowledge of higher things, Dan Reed's Rush is ablaze with unforgettable melody and lyrics that ignite a gentle unassuming flicker, a glimpse of a future of hope and healing.-FG
Blue Skies For Black Hearts Love Is Not Enough
CD Preview
Breaking up is hard to do, but it sure is fun to sing about it! There are a lot of hurt feelings on this 10 song CD entitled Love is Not Enough, and each one seems more upbeat than the one before. This poppy "sad songs about saying goodbye" album could not give a more cheerful experience if it tried to tickle babies. Though ironic, it's not a mistake or a misplaced parody; it's misery wants healing rather than company. With hookie, true, Brit pop, Beatles-esque moments directing its course, it's a hyper-intelligent approach to a "Love gone wrong, breaking up" themed album and is infinitely more fun to listen to than the guy sleeping on your couch because his girlfriend threw him out.
On Love is Not Enough, acoustic and electric guitars combine in a mix of jangly rhythms and sassy hooks along with piano, bass and drums to build to the sound and feel of an original modern day British invasion; a perfect blend of inspiration and imagination. Poppy backing vocals and yes folks even some hand-clapping add flavor to this power-packed popsicle of iced over love.
-FG for Performer Magazine
Kind of Girl "Poetry Boy"
Contagious in pensive delivery and striking in character, is the beautiful voice of Kind of Girl..s vocalist and guitarist Sissel. Jokingly, she refers to herself as the ..Queen of Fairy Tale People,.. but in her wistful delivery of this unforgettable pop couplet "Poetry Boy," you are transported in spirit to another place. It might as well be a fairy tale land, though the nymphs and satyrs really have their amps cranked.
As the vocal floats on the border of fantasy and reality, just out of earthly grasp, an airy mind etching guitar hook compliments a muscular bass and drum combination that could pull a freight train. Not only does the song linger forever in your mind, it also delves into the body itself; this song feels and plays like a radio hit.
As if a potent force of nature, Kind of Girl..s "Poetry Boy" is like the eye of a storm, calm at the center but surrounded by a swirl of emotion.-FG
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Delaney "The Stuff"
Poppy enough to detonate with joy; driving guitars and a buoyantly blissful keyboard hook let you know that something good is on the horizon for someone in Delaney..s "The Stuff."
Ascending musical passages sound triumphant with lyrics that take you into the heart of this song about a guy who is extremely inspired by a girl that he walked into a bar just to meet. "Walked into the bar just to put you in my path"
Paradoxically, in "The Stuff," infatuation turns to desperation when the writer asks his sister to call the girl in question and tell her that he is "the stuff."(My sister and brother would have had a field day ruining my life had I ever asked them to do the same.) As the story heats up, it mirrors an arrangement that expands and contracts like some kind of musical supernova. Always victorious, it transmits the excitement of meeting the girl without ever dealing with the part where the relationship explodes. You know, when she moves out and takes your CD collection with her.-FG
Euro-Trash Girl "I'm All You Really Need"
The enchanting vocals of Euro-Trash Girl..s Judit Casado adorn this unambiguous pop ode with a voice as sweet and warm as a hot fudge sundae and bring home a straightforward message ..I..m All You Really Need...

Light and airy, this song..s genuine pop disposition takes off like a balsa wood glider but lands like an F-15 Eagle. It ensnares with melody alone and pulls you straight into its stratosphere of sound barrier penetrating guitars. It delivers the expected in the beginning and breaks every rule at the end unleashing the guitar from all constraints of gravity and volume.

From the album Kiss Away the Rain Euro-Trash Girl..s ..I..m All You Really Need.. basks in the sunlight above the clouds of angst and love.-FG
Element 57 "20 Minutes"
"It..s the things along the way that teach us everything," sings Chris Galyon in Element 57's Lanthide melting exhortation "20 Minutes." And there..s nothing like experience to crystallize a quintessential musician's anthem. "We're soldiers of the fate and we'll come running."
The lyrics could stand alone, but crushing guitars and fully carborated vocals in 20 Minutes encase this statement about overcoming the results of the pursuit of a false prize, the aftermath of being intoxicated by something valueless yet all-consuming.
The elements of "20 Minutes" are courage and the desire to move on to stability. The periodic table at the back of Miss Frizzle's classroom may say that Element 57 is a rare earth constituent called Lanthanum, but so much for the chemistry lesson. This Element 57 combines experience and artistry into a complex musical molecule.-FG
Jon Auer- "Six Feet Under"
Spreading its leafless branches across the jewel case cover, a single barren tree lays paradox against a backdrop of green fields on Jon Auer's Songs From the Year of Our Demise. Musically reflecting this contrast on the song "Six Feet Under" is an "everything's-all-right" hook of simple, happy tones intertwined with the sounds of spiraling demise; a siren of forever falling notes.
Lyrically constructed from gravesite imagery, "Six Feet Under" might first make you think that someone has died. Yet this song is a thoughtful consideration of the depth and pain involved when two people who have become one try to go back to being two. They bury who they have become. "We can dig our graves tonight. I'll show you yours and then you'll show me mine."
Ordinary pop songwriters hinge all of their strength on a melody giving little more than lip service to the lyrics. But the extraordinary Jon Auer grows his songs like the tree on the jewel case cover with layers of meaning branching out from an unforgettable pop hook.
-FG
Shiloe- "The Rat"
Full of up-tempo angry guitar reverb, this fast and dangerous song is like listening to the sound track for a spy movie; it's what you hear in your head when you're pretending you're a secret agent. With a line like, "I don't care too much for you and you don't think at all of me," Mrs. Bond should check the minivan for exploding briefcases before she picks up the kids from soccer practice. -FG
Sweety- "Madison"
It takes the perfect symbiosis of lyrics and music to describe the ultimate parasitic relationship. No healing, no deliverance and no easy answers are the jarring realizations of dissonant love in Sweety's "Madison." A discordant melody leashes a tribal drumbeat in the verses, mirroring a troubled relationship, a pulsing heartbeat pumping the blood out of an open wound.
In contrast, a poppy upbeat chorus of progressively driving power chords and surging energy seems like the backdrop for a potential "happy ending," but it slides off the end of the knife, serrated side up, and ends up being the anthem for an unanswered prayer, "Madison, Madison say you're alright."
Condensed to only a few lines of intense lyrics, regret, sadness, longing, desire, and passion all broadcast their presence with extraordinary precision targeting the brain cells that break your heart but make you grateful that someone could put into words-FG
98 lb Weakling- "American Jew"
If this song was all about melody, it would write itself permanently into the code of your mind's personal hard drive with its gutsy guitar passages and power pop arrangement. But you could throw out the melody and even the music and still have an ironically timely and introspectively fascinating journey into one man's view of conflict. It's timely with Israel marching into Lebanon yet ironic in its personal nature as seen by a Jew in America not knowing how to feel, just hating the violence and wondering what can be done. Even more ironic, this song was written over a year ago and predates the current headlines. The writer tries to see things from all sides and see the truth from the proper point of view, but real problems defy all the simple answers.
98 lb Weakling's "American Jew" with its attention grabbing playing and lyrically potent storyline brings home the meaning of "power pop". -FG
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Fran