FIRST UTTERANCE

"Her terror screams, they cut the air, but no one hears her there..."

Long considered a "forgotten classic", Comus' debut is certainly unique for its time. It would go on to have significant influences on later folk and folk-adjacent scenes, but it remains kind of an island unto itself. Very little of the folk-rock of the time it released sounded quite like it, and it wouldn't be until the 90s that anyone seriously tried to imitate it.

While Comus' sound is very unique, First Utterance's presentation and lyrical themes are heavily steeped in a broader creative-cultural milieu which should immediately be recognizable from the outset. The 70s saw a kind of distinctively British offshoot of the originally American hippie counterculture, one which retained the "back-to-nature" ethos but traded Eastern mysticism and drug experimentation for a romantic revival of local folklore and ancient history. For some, this merely took the form of nostalgic "Merrie England" small-town pastoralism, but others reached back into deeper and weirder corners, leading to the growth of neopagan religious movements like Wicca. This scared parts of the British cultural establishment nearly as much as the draft-card-burning, acid-dropping hippies across the Atlantic scared their own elders, and these fears manifested in films such as 1973's The Wicker Man. First Utterance could be described as a "Wicker Man album", but it carries a particularly sexual, Dionysian edge to it that reminds me more of Arthur Machen's Great God Pan. It seeks to revive a lost pagan past (or the romantic image of one), while simultaneously acknowledging how dark, grim, and cruel that pagan past really was. John Milton's Comus, the source of the band's name, also bears mention here as a significant rhematic inspiration.

"Diana", named for the virginal Roman goddess so beloved by Wiccans, is a perfect tone-setter. Where most within Comus' artistic milieu would evoke the goddess as a symbol of chastity and the divine feminine, the song focuses entirely on that imagery being despoiled by a rapist. Lurching strings and a cacophony of vocals create an intense and paranoid atmosphere appropriate for the chase described in the lyrics, with the violin being the central instrument. Despite the subject matter, the song has a tone of "wicked fun" to it, quite fitting for the satyr after which the band takes its name.

"The Herald", one of two very lengthy progressive tracks on the first side of the album, is far more peaceful and calming, with lyrics which are far more conventional and "positive" than the rest of this material. Where the band's two male vocalists were more prominent on Diana, here Bobbie Watson's gentle voice is central. The tone is quite melancholy and sorrowful, despite the lyrics being more about the personifications of the sun and moon than anything too grim. Acoustic guitar primarily drives this song, but there are also several flute breaks which greatly add to the mood.

"Drip Drip", our Side A closer, is perhaps the most notorious song on here, thanks to the lyrics from the perspective of a necrophiliac finding a hanged woman and pleasuring himself with her corpse. The strings and the tone of "playful wickedness" from Diana both return here, though they find themselves interspersed with sections closer in tone to The Herald's melancholy thanks to Drip Drip being a longer and "proggier" composition. The feverish "I'll be gentle" chanting in the final movement of the song sticks out as a particularly memorable moment. Both this track and the one immediately after it, which are told entirely from the perspective of sexually depraved male characters, feature lead male vocalist Roger Wootton, with Watson only doing backing vocals. The interplay between the two, most prominent on Diana, is very suited to the album's heavy sexual themes.

The self-titled "Song to Comus" opens Side B. It's the centerpiece of the album, best embodying its recurring themes. It is directly about the satyr Comus, and, much like in Diana, his rape of young virgin women. Comus' hypnotic seduction of his victims, who are none the wiser as to his intentions, feels almost symbolic of the darkness lying below the romantic surface of neopaganism that this album is so fascinated with. Young hippies are drawn in by the idea of a lost pastoral utopia, only to find themselves confronted with a past far more grim and violent than the one they're trying to escape. Structurally, the song builds up from a quiet start to an intense chorus, abruptly quiets down, then slowly builds up and peaks again, a cyclical framework that mirrors the slumber, awakening, and sick antics of the central character in the lyrics. Words repeat and echo in a manner which almost reminds me of children's rhymes, fitting the "playful" atmosphere that the album leans into. In each chorus, the screamed vocals almost feel like the primal stream-of-consciousness of the Comus character as he violates his victim ("COMUS RAPE! COMUS BREAK! SWEET YOUNG VIRGIN'S VIRTUE TAKE!"). The instrumentation, beginning with acoustic guitar then building up to a chorus dominated by strings and flute, is surprisingly less chaotic than in Diana and Drip Drip, again fitting for the cyclical structure of the song. This really deserves to be the centerpiece on this album, as it's easily my favorite song here.

"The Bite" continues with the "playfully wicked" atmosphere, though for once we shift away from the themes of sexual violation. The Wicker Man comparisons are most obvious here, as this song's lyrics describe the capture, torture, and execution of a Christian outsider (possibly an evangelist or missionary) by a village of unwelcoming pagans. The usual violin and flute play equal parts here, but the song is very fast-paced, never really letting up after it kicks off. Bobbie Watson, who played a more minimal role on the prior two tracks, has a more prominent role here, though primarily through nonverbal accompaniment, with Wootton still on the lead. The song is followed by a short instrumental interlude, "Bitten", whose name implies it primarily exists as an accompaniment to the previous track. It's certainly quite atmospheric, but feels more like an extended outro to The Bite than its own composition.

"The Prisoner" closes out the album, and is kind of the odd man out here lyrically. The song's grim subject matter (concerning the madness of an inmate at a mental institution) is not tonally at odds with the rest, and the vocals have that same "playful" tone, but it lacks either a connection to pagan imagery or the theme of sexual violence. The strings here are also used a bit differently from on the rest of the album, being a little more conventionally "folk" and less lurching than the other tracks. It's still quite a good song, though, and serves very well as a closer, especially the panning shouts of "insane!" that serve as its capstone.

I absolutely love this album, it's a flawless package that sounds like nothing else from its time. I've pitched it to people as "Evil Jethro Tull" but it's really only comparable to them as far as being proggy folk-rock with lots of flute and strings. Its appeal truly is all its own.

BEST TRACK: Song to Comus

WEAKEST TRACK: Bitten

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