There are stations in life marked by our age, who we were in terms of the face we gave to the outside world or the things we believed in. Sometimes those stations are unrecognizable to us as we get older, other times they are not that different and either way can be good or bad. We might have been on the right path all along or we may have evolved in important ways. Listening to "Candles" by Coma Girls, the ostensibly solo project of singer songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Chris Spino, feels like one of those stations. It feels like that artful impactful period seeded by the late 70's and 80's but existing in the mid 90's. Spino mines that crucial period when men were free to expose themselves fully, a certain kind of blood letting. Call it emo or call it something else, I just call it real. Maybe a genre all to itself, the acoustic core was the psychic connection, the touchstone even through heavier instruments can wrap around that guitar and important voice. Spino, who, by the way has a wonderful vocal countenance that seem not only leashed to that aforementioned time but existing in it (if that makes any sense). Let's face it, the acoustic guitar is important because it is the instrument that is accessible at all times, a wooden friend, father, mother or lover who allows you to express yourself.
I want to share these press notes (bracketed):
[Since he was a teenager, Chris Spino has played in bands: Punk bands. Jangle-pop bands. Bands influenced by the girl groups of the 1950s and ‘60s. Metal bands. Jazz-rock bands. Weird bands with songs built around weird time signatures. But all along, he's maintained a solo project – called Coma Girls for more than a decade – that mined his personal interest in pushing lyrically focused singer-songwriter fare through a filter of spacious shoegaze and psychedelic vibes.
“I’ve played just about every role in every kind of band you can think of, but Coma Girls is me doing what I’ve always secretly wanted to do,” he said, “which is just writing pop songs on an acoustic guitar.”]
[Since he was a teenager, Chris Spino has played in bands: Punk bands. Jangle-pop bands. Bands influenced by the girl groups of the 1950s and ‘60s. Metal bands. Jazz-rock bands. Weird bands with songs built around weird time signatures. But all along, he's maintained a solo project – called Coma Girls for more than a decade – that mined his personal interest in pushing lyrically focused singer-songwriter fare through a filter of spacious shoegaze and psychedelic vibes.
“I’ve played just about every role in every kind of band you can think of, but Coma Girls is me doing what I’ve always secretly wanted to do,” he said, “which is just writing pop songs on an acoustic guitar.”]
"Candles" sneaks up on you. Spino plays everything on it even though it sounds like a band all facing each other and doing it. The acoustic / bass sway as a chill framework for Spino's poetry about the guilt and shame that comes with addiction, is potent and when the song erupts, when stations of pain are relived, it gave me chills, goosebumps skating across the skin on my forearms.
"When you’re gone and I’m high / You are a freight train, lovie / When you’re standing in line / To be the change not coming / Oh you take me for a ride / To be a tiger in the cage you’ve had all your life / Darling, I’m always on your side / Leave your candles lit / My pain keeps burning on and on and on / I said, leave your candles lit / My pain keeps burning on and on..."
"When you’re gone and I’m high / You are a freight train, lovie / When you’re standing in line / To be the change not coming / Oh you take me for a ride / To be a tiger in the cage you’ve had all your life / Darling, I’m always on your side / Leave your candles lit / My pain keeps burning on and on and on / I said, leave your candles lit / My pain keeps burning on and on..."
This moving introduction makes me want to dive into Spino’s new Coma Girls album – "Crystal Pistol" (out Oct. 13 via Baby Robot Records).
From press notes (bracketed):
The new album [finds him gently settled into a sweet spot between two of his major influences: Emotionally raw folk songs (think Elliott Smith and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst) and spindly, fuzzed out garage rock (à la Deerhunter and Jay Reatard). After recording a handful of releases straight to analog tape with Thee Oh Sees keyboardist Tomas Dolas, Spino met his current collaborator, Christian Paul Philippi, who produced 2022’s No Umbrella For Star Flower and returned to the same role for Crystal Pistol.]
It is a constant that some of the most impactful music comes from pain. It is just how it is. Novelists rarely write about a series of happy occurrences, either do songwriters. A lot of the material on "Crystal Pistol" is about Spino's past addiction issues, “A lot of the lyrics on Crystal Pistol are about coming out of that and cleaning up my life and really examining the ways I acted when I was an addict, and the ways those actions affected other people in my life.”]
Looking forward to what Coma Girls has to say about his stations in life and how he moved from one to another.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://twitter.com/GirlsComa
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2zhHy5UTXM8I046ftVnJvV
https://www.instagram.com/comagirlsla/
https://www.tiktok.com/@comagirlsla
Since he was a teenager, Chris Spino has played in bands: Punk bands. Jangle-pop bands. Bands influenced by the girl groups of the 1950s and ‘60s. Metal bands. Jazz-rock bands. Weird bands with songs built around weird time signatures.
But all along, he's maintained a solo project – called Coma Girls for more than a decade – that mined his personal interest in pushing lyrically focused singer-songwriter fare through a filter of spacious shoegaze and psychedelic vibes.
Spino’s new Coma Girls album – Crystal Pistol (out Oct. 13 via Baby Robot Records) – finds him gently settled into a sweet spot between two of his major influences: Emotionally raw folk songs (think Elliott Smith and Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst) and spindly, fuzzed out garage rock (à la Deerhunter and Jay Reatard). After recording a handful of releases straight to analog tape with Thee Oh Sees keyboardist Tomas Dolas, Spino met his current collaborator, Christian Paul Philippi, who produced 2022’s No Umbrella For Star Flower and returned to the same role for Crystal Pistol.
“No Umbrella was a COVID record that I made with some friends. I got sober last year and wanted to do this new one by myself, but with Christian’s help because we work really quickly and efficiently together,” Spino said. “I wanted to do something that felt a little more clear-headed but still felt ambitious and experimental.”
Crystal Pistol is a deeply affecting confession through indie rock songs that tend to begin as intimate folk-rock stories and frequently conclude in fuzzy shoegaze chaos. Spino takes us on a self-reflective journey that few would have the courage to explore, and some never come back from.
“I used to think music was a healthy outlet for me to get everything out, but now that I’ve started writing for my next record, I can see that it’s very different,” Spino continued. “There’s a lot of stuff about forgiveness and acceptance and focusing on the good in my life instead of all the bitterness. Because I’ve changed so much in the past year, there’s a lot of good in my life right now, and that’s exciting.”
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