COMUS

1971 PROGRESSIVE-FOLK/FREAK-FOLK

First Utterance is the debut record from short lived English progressive folk band Comus. Growing up I, like so many others, listened to my dad’s tunes. Folk, progressive and psychedelic rock, the classics of the mid to late sixties. Inevitably I began the deep dive into the musical unknown and stumbled upon First Utterance. Labeled prog folk, released in the early seventies, and adorned with gnarly cover art, all the makings of a warm bubble bath of childhood comfort. The second you start drawing the water that although familiar, it’s clear something is very off. First Utterance is disturbing, it’s an album that sounds like its cover looks and to warn all potential listeners the lyrics are of the freakish medieval tale end of the folk spectrum. Maidens and monsters but with no happy endings, loads of disturbing imagery, violence, and r*pe.

The sound isn’t any less frightening with the fairly simple actors of acoustic guitar, bass, violin, woodwinds and all manner of drums performing profane rituals on the altar of a dead god. The vocals cover the range of a cultist with a shattered mind, mostly raving but occasionally he holds together the fragments of his sanity for an orthodox delivery. To pair with there is our damsel, femme singing high in both pitch and charm. In the Greek pantheon Comus is the god of revelry and moonlit rendezvouses. Yet such an inspiration manages to undersell the band’s lunacy, their captivating, beautiful lunacy. The record begins with the dizzying journey through a dark wood that is Diana. Starting with a sinister whisper and slinking guitar before breaking into feral howls and hand drums. It’s shocking that a song so strange could be this much of an earworm. Hell, it’s about the personification of Lust hunting down the titular Diana, to do with I dare not imagine but also completely knockout single material.  

Diana Diana kick your feet up
Lust bares his teeth and whines
For he’s picked up the scent of virtue
And he knows the panic signs

The performances are possessed, from vocals to instrumentals it’s hard not to get wrapped in the wild chase. The Herald tames the beast for a winding fable about the fantastical notion of the day and night being brought forth by mystical seers, that is, heralds. Quickly picked guitars guide us to the respite of serene vocals that soar on angelic wings before morphing into an extended acoustic solo that transitions into weeping strings. It feels like a rickety horse drawn carriage ride over a deserted hill, stopping to inspect a tree dear in your memory as the warmth of the sun penetrates your skin. The song rises and falls in gorgeous fashion but you can sense a great terror in the distance. That is Drip Drip, an unbelievably gruesome epic. Our certainly crazed narrator carries the pale corpse of a recently hung woman to the woods to defile her in the dirt. Disgusting, yes, but it’s poetry is irresistible.

Your evil eyes more damning than a demon’s curse
Your lovely body, soon caked with mud
As I carry you to your grave, my arms your hearse
You stand before me defenseless
Your stare unchanging, silent, cold, intense sears my brain

The strings on this are bewitching as they slice back and forth stirring the insanity. The lyrics break for two extended instrumental passages. The first with the aforementioned strings and the second with fast guitar chords and harried gibberish being yelped before suddenly breaking to bring us full circle. Our singer reaches his manic apex as he shrieks that he’ll be gentle, that he’ll not hurt, referring to the corpse of course, black comedy doesn’t do it justice. The femme backing vocals that are all over this are brillant, its as if the corpse that is our subject is crying out to the audience. Then comes the tribute to our mad god, Song To Comus. The rhythm dances in unrestrained bouts like an age old poem being put on by an overzealous jester to a growing crowd of locals. The premise is that of the classic trickster, Comus using his supernatural abilities to lure virgins into his realm to do with them what he pleases.

Chastity chaser!
Virile for the virgin’s virtue!
Excite her exciter!
You better go before you bleed and he hurts you!
He chased the chaste!
You better leave if you value your virtue!

The tune is a showcase of everything that makes First Utterance great. Vocals that swing from the highs and lows of a demented episode, pulse-pounding strings with punchy acoustic guitar and harrowing woodwinds, fresh on the first listen and the hundredth. The Bite is a more simplistic story of a Christian pilgrim being jailed and executed with it being implied to be in pagan lands but with the bolstering pillars of colorful depictions. The pensive animals onlooking, his emaciated exterior, the ambiance of the stone prison. As always the instrumental is terrific with the woodwinds prancing delightfully despite the grim topic.

An interlude finally arrives with Bitten but it’s hardly a break as strings anxiously writhe across its length leaving the listener more nervous then before it arrived. We jump into a time machine for The Prisoner, dragging us out of the dark ages to the doldrums of the twentieth century. Although a widely separate setting it manages to feel thematically appropriate. Lyrics of being declared a mental and social deviant, receiving the harsh treatments of backwards thinkers until the brain is wiped away. Madness, torture, and the desire for unbridled creativity, that without this very album would not exist. The tune itself is good but weighed down by awkward anomalies. The recording is flat with the vocals and strings feeling very distant, and lacking in the snarling in-your face quality of the prior pieces. The masculine backing vocals featured for the first time here sound like they are lost, accidentally finding their way to over crowd the otherwise superb femme vocals. It’s as if the song was recorded years after or before its companions, still, it’s okay, a missed opportunity for what could have easily been another perfect track.

First Utterance’s strengths reside in all aspects of its assemblage, the demented vocals, the marvelously accursed poeticism, the discomforting harmonies squeezed from its oddities, and most importantly its melding, the resulting one-of-a-kind eccentricity. It is the first, last and only utterance, a work as beguiling as it is daring. Even after a hundred listens you will be caught off guard if not properly braced and each time the sadistic lashing to the pleasure center of your brain will have you coming back for more.

9-10/10

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