TO KEEP FROM CRYING

Human beings can be incredibly stubborn. I was amply warned before taking on Comus' second and final album and I knew that many of those who sampled To Keep From Crying came away bitterly disappointed. Yet I was sure that since both vocalists Roger Wooton and Bobbie Watson and bassist Hellaby were holdovers from the earlier incarnation of Comus, and that Wooton had been the main songwriter on both the stunning first album First Utterance and this effort, To Keep From Crying couldn't really be all that bad. What I got was one hell of a kick in the groin ... because this album is a catastrophe!

I don't know what possessed Wooton to make album like this. Well I do have an idea. Essentially after coming out with First Utterance in 1971, Comus had dissolved the next year leaving the concept album, The Malgaard Suite tantalisingly unrecorded. Two years later, the then fledgling label Virgin offered Wooton the opportunity to revive Comus. Unfortunately without the main instrumental talents (guitarist Glenn Goring, violinist Colin Pearson and keyboardist/flautist Rob Young) who had propelled First Utterance, Wooton attempted to make a commercial pop-rock album.

The eerie tones of Wooton and Watson are completely at odds with the pedestrian pop-rock tunes that Wooton wrote. Some songs are downright laughable like the opener Down (Like A Movie Star), the sunny pop song Figure In Your Dreams and the rambling, pop-soul wannabe track Get Yourself A Man, which is full of painfully off-key vocals from Watson. Bassist Andy Hellaby makes a couple of totally forgetable attempts at creating soundscapes (Waves And Caves and Panophany) and this album is generally awful.

Only one track is remotely close to being worth of the name Comus, and that, Childen Of The Universe is more of an enjoyable folk-rock track in the vein of The Strawbs or Fotheringay than it is classic Comus.

Like its predecessor this album sunk almost immediately. In this case however, the public were right. I implore you all to stay away from this one. ... 18% on the MPV scale