COMET GAIN - CITY FALLEN LEAVES *Pre-Order

Release Date Friday 13th February 2026
All pre-orders will be dispatched/made ready for collection on that day.

Formed in London in 1992 by singer and songwriter David Christian, Comet Gain were originally inspired by early Creation Records, Television Personalities and mod culture, drawing from the same ideals as Dexys, The Style Council and Vic Godard, and from the lineage of The Velvet Underground, The Byrds and the 13th Floor Elevators. In the ensuing years they have released eight albums on such esteemed labels as Wiiija, Kill Rock Stars, What’s Your Rupture and Fortuna POP! that blend French New Wave with English kitchen-sink heart, Riot Grrrl with acid punk, and C86 with Post-Punk and Northern Soul, somehow outliving their peers and in turn inspiring a younger generation of DIY musicians.

Comet Gain are all things post-punk, DIY, Indie POP, international pop underground, lo fi, garagebeat and folk & rock. Boy/Girl vocals, scratchy guitars, sweet noise and rough melodies, enthusiasm and pain. It's all right here. Put it on, turn it up and feel alive again.

City Fallen Leaves’ was first released in 2005 by Track & Field in the UK and Kill Rock Stars in the USA and is now being reissued worldwide by Tapete Records.

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This release originally came out at a pivotal point in the bands story and was also expected at the time to be the ending of the story. Me and Anne-aure who had slowly been finding her feet at first playing this lap steel I bought (seemed like a good idea at the time – she learnt a few things from a DVD we bought by someone called Cindy Cashdollar I think who was real and ended up playing with Ryan Adams – the one and only connection we will ever have with that guy) but it was a tough instrument and only worked sporadically with my very un-country songs – anyway she left it on a train from Leeds to London but still has the metal slide thing with her sticker initials on it – she then thought it best to take up the keyboards as nobody really played them as there lead instrument even though we had lots of the keyboard bits over our songs it was usually just Jon or me or occasionally Kay doing it with one finger – which is how I like it but yeh, we thought it would be good to have one person who actually does that properly – well not TOO properly – standards must be maintained. Anyway – i digress already – let me give you some context.

“Realistes”, our previous album, was a couple years done – I was living in deeper Croydon then for that record now I was back in north London – just off the Seven Sisters Road; prostitutes and crack heads, stella cans floating down the new river, me and Anne-laure and a revolving cast of flat mates – Phil Sutton who used to be the drummer, strumming away in his back room overlooking the jewish school at the back of the cat infested garden. Gabe who I knew from San Francisco and was DJ-ing or something with Har Mar Superstar (remember him?!) and would bring us back strange exotic booze from Ibiza where they were doing some kind of debauched residency and Dale Shaw another old friend who was part of the Huggy Bear crowd and was in Blood Sausage and painted the room black so he could concentrate on trying to write (it must have worked as he's done about 5 or whatever books now). The fridge was in the corridor and the local prostitutes used to throw used condoms over our hedge – ironically our landlord was one Steven Drew who also ran Track and Field records with the esteemed Paul Wright who both put this record out (in conjunction with our American label enablers Kill Rock Stars).

This was gonna be my ‘Forever Changes’ – not in scope or genius or baroque-osity but in that Arthur Lee saw it as his final goodbye – he had apocalyptic visions and thought it was his last will and testament – a lot of the wonderful words reflect that propulsion into I'm ready for you oblivion – this would be mine because me and Anne-Laure were gonna be splitting to Bordeaux, France – her hometown – because she had got a job thing and for family and other now forgotten reasons and I thought, well okay why not, could be fun, so I was reflecting on the idea of leaving my town the one that had shaped me so much and friends and the streets and the sounds and all that glue that keeps you walking – i doubted we could continue the band so I guessed it was a fiery farewell.

At this point I should add this is MY personal recollection – at the time if I recall Jon was shunting between Brighton and Catford, London (his mums), he had broken up with Jo Huggy Bear and was with Tobi Vail, but I recall he was in a happy Jon place – looking sharp, always ready for the whatever, Kay was getting more familiar with the hardcore punk scene and becoming a real London girl, Rachel was working at Beano's the biggest second hand record shop in Europe and was deep into a relationship with American punk dude Steve Dore (they remain married to this day) and Woodie was getting more and more into producing stuff – he did a great remix thing for Thee Headcoatees full of dub and weird beats – that was us then.

Also i was more fucked up during this record than any other – as in mentally, psychically, physically etc – my memories are either pinpoint or scattered and I have bad vibe refrains from this time as well as euphoric moments but to be honest I was a mess – because Anne-laure was French and I loved her and didn't want her to think bad of me and my English habits I would try not to drink too much in front of her but I was hurtling towards some kind of need for oblivion (I know why but I ain't saying) so did weird things like hide mini bottles of cognac in the bathroom over head light so when I had a shower I could down it – also most of the lyrics for these songs were written in a small random green patch a few minutes away which was usually either empty or had dodgy fuckers loitering – I would buy some cans of Stella and sit there writing – during this period I would either be fairly ok or lose it spectacularly like when I covered my face in toothpaste (not recommended) or spent the night in nearby Finsbury Park with a bottle of wine and suicidal thoughts to be interrupted by night dwellers more insane than me – this kind of mindset permeates the record and I can see it still – plus there was the fact that for the first half of the recording – SOUP studios – owned and ran by our friend Simon Trought who was in this great forgotten band Tompaulin (check them out NOW) was at the same time recording the comeback after prison LP by TV Personalities – oh my god the amount of stories just there but to simplify – we tended to do the dayshift – this was a very small studio near Bounds Green in north London – a mere shamble down the road to Wood Green where Edwyn Collins used to do his magic and REM made ‘Fables Of The Reconstruction's the miserable north London rain - and where just a few years later me, Anne-laure and James from the band would live – anyway – we would do the day and Dan would turn up for the night – me and Dan were friends but he was a different Dan – he'd cajole me into going to the pub with him and buy him drinks and various unmentionable escapades – he was constantly supposed to play on the record – we had a fairly angry TVPs style song on the LP ‘Daydream Scars' its certainly filled with 'look back in anger/adventure playground' DNA and there was a guitar solo for Dan to do – the solo exists but we were both so ruined that to this day I don't know if its Dan playing or me pretending – its that kind of record.

So – North London again – leaving for France soon – maybe this is the end of the band, the end of it all – the band is a disparate bunch of friends – nobody cares about us or wants our stupid music - all those dumb movements we somehow got slightly linked to are dead – britpop/riot grrl/new mod/C86 – none of us have money – we barely have a label (Kill Rock Stars are technically our label but its a non contractual verbal 'hey lets do a record maybe?' kinda deal with Slim Moon – god bless him then and now) and our friends from gigs and there amazing nightclub ‘Track and Field' were the scene we find ourselves in – full of friends and likeminded types – have decided to put out records – in fact a bunch of great ones and will continue to do so and basically become the glue that holds this scene of like minded but different folks together – Paul and Steve deserve more kudos than nearly all the bands during this era – but anyway – this was how the record started.

David Christian (as recollected in 2025)

Tracklisting
A1 The Fists In The Pocket
A2 Days I Forgot To Write Down
A3 Daydream Scars
A4 Bored Roar
A5 Seven Sisters To Silverlake
A6 This English Melancholy
A7 The Punk Got Fucked
B1 The Story Of The Vivian Girls
B2 Just One More Summer Before I Go
B3 Draw A Smile Upon An Egg
B4 Your Robert!
B5 Fingernailed For You
B6 New Mattress
B7 Gone Before We Open Our Eyes
B8 Right Now? No
B9 The Ballad Of A Mix Tape

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