Label: Castle Music (UK), CMEDD 1121
Style: Progressive Folk, Folk Rock, Psychedelic Folk
Country: London, England
Time: 71:50, 47:53
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 448, 291 Mb
First Utterance: First Utterance was notable for its unique blend of progressive rock, folk, psychedelia, and elements of paganism and the macabre. The overall thematic tone of the album is of vulnerable innocence facing abusive power, with songs dealing with such themes as necrophilia ("Drip Drip"), rape ("Diana", "Song to Comus") and shock therapy ("The Prisoner"). These themes contrast starkly with the acoustic sound of the record, featuring acoustic guitar, violin, flute, and lyrical, almost Arcadian, female harmonies.
References to Comus by other bands and artists include Opeth, citing its lyrics in album and song titles and tattoos. Experimental outfit Current 93 also covered "Diana" as the opening song on their 1997 LP Horsey.
The cover artwork was drawn in ball point pen by Roger Wootton, lead singer and songwriter of the band. The centerfold artwork was painted by guitarist Glenn Goring.
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Utterance)
To Keep from Crying: To Keep from Crying is the second album by progressive folk band Comus, released in 1974. It featured a notably different lineup from their other releases, with the violin/viola and woodwind spots replaced by keyboards and a conventional drum kit. The album's content has also been noted as sounding more mainstream than their earlier work, which centred more in conventional progressive rock and folk.
Allmusic's retrospective review praised the vocal arrangements and male/female harmonies of songs such as "Figure in Your Dreams" and "Perpetual Motion", and were even more endeared to "dark folk songs" such as "Touch Down", with its "ghostly children's chorus" and "cosmic synth tones". However, they criticized the Japanese issue of the album for editing "Waves and Caves" and "After the Dream" down to well under a minute each and concluded "The record is pretty good, but it has the misfortune of paling in the shadow of its nightmarish predecessor."
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Keep_from_Crying)
First Utterance (1971):
01. Diana (04:35)
02. The Herald (12:10)
03. Drip Drip (10:51)
04. Song To Comus (07:29)
05. The Bite (05:29)
06. Bitten (02:18)
07. The Prisoner (06:17)
08. Diana (04:24)
09. In The Lost Queen's Eyes (02:50)
10. Winter Is A Coloured Bird (08:01)
11. All The Colours Of Darkness (07:21)
To Keep From Crying (1974):
01. Down (Like A Moviestar) (04:06)
02. Tough Down (04:45)
03. Waves And Caves (01:33)
04. Figure In Your Dreams (03:10)
05. Children Of The Universe (05:38)
06. So Long Supernova (03:21)
07. Perpetual Motion (04:07)
08. Panophany (00:30)
09. Get Yourself A Man (07:08)
10. To Keep From Crying (05:39)
11. After The Dream (01:00)
12. Fiesta Fandango (03:50)
13. New Tide (02:59)
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