Interview with Little Comets: ‘What type of music will we want after all this?’

Newcastle-based eclectic indie rock band, Little Comets, have released their latest single, ‘Total Abject Paranoia’, about the dire state of the world and are now at work on a new album.

The band consists of Rob Coles (lead vocal/guitar/piano/viola), his brother Micky Coles (guitar/vocals), Matt Hall (bass/vocals) plus, for live shows, Nathan Green (drums) and Matt Saxon (keyboard/vocals/percussion). ‘Matt (Hall) had a nice Rickenbacker guitar that we wanted to borrow, so we wanted him in the band,’ Rob said, laughing. ‘It had such a great, jangly tone. Matt S had played in bands we’d loved for years, such as The Spies. He’s a lovely person and we became friends. Me and Micky are based in Birmingham now so we just googled ‘young Birmingham drummer’, found Greeny and contacted him.’

‘Total Abject Paranoia’ was recorded with ‘Baywatch’, which they released last year. ‘It took ages to get the mix right for ‘Total Abject Paranoia,’ Rob said. ‘We all wanted different things from it, I wanted it to hug the lead vocals. I demoed it when Micky was off doing something else. The lyrics came really quickly and the two verses are distinct. The first verse is about the rise of populism, both here and in America. The second verse came about because I’d been watching HyperNormalisation on iPlayer, which makes you want to retreat from the world.’ (HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis, which argues that governments and financiers etc. have built simple ‘fake’ worlds since the 1970s which are run by corporations and kept in place by politicians.)

The brothers have spent six months building a recording studio in Micky’s garden, although social distancing regulations make it impossible for them to both use it at the same time. ‘When we work together, we provide what we both need,’ Rob said.

‘It will be interesting to see what sort of correlation there might be in terms of the words used in songs before and after lockdown’

Now, the plan is to get an album done this year: ‘We’ve got loads of demos and we’re trying to work out which ones will complement each other,’ Rob said. ‘It will be interesting to see what sort of correlation there might be in terms of the words used in songs before and after lockdown. What type of music will we want after all this? Will people want something that cheers them up or that talks about what we’ve lived through? My position is that I don’t want to write anything overt about lockdown.’

Of their songs, Rob’s favourite is ‘À bientôt’ from 2017. ‘Live, every night a song can be great if you catch someone’s eye in the crowd and they’re really into it. With this one, it’s chilled out live, in the first half there’s more focus on the lyrics and the relentless beat comes in later. Nathan has added so much to it live. We love doing different versions of the song, you can connect with it in a different way.’

However, one approach that they have yet to take is singing new songs that haven’t been released in front of a live audience: ‘The reaction might be muted because people don’t know the song, so we’d think they don’t like it, which isn’t logical, I know!’

Their single, ‘Baywatch’, which came out last year, is an observational track looking at how the entertainment industry has both changed and stagnated over the years: ‘The chorus came about because I was thinking about when I was little, back in the day, when there were just four (TV) channels and Saturday night was family night,’ Rob said. ‘The nation was all watching the same thing. It made me think of the latent sexism in shows like Baywatch and TV in the 90’s. The same thing is now happening all over again with our children.’

‘It was the sense that you shouldn’t give up on anything – any dream – even if it seems completely implausible’

One of my favourite tracks is ‘The Man Who Wrote Thriller’, which is a tribute to Rod Temperton, the man who penned Michael Jackson’s smash hit. ‘It’s about his story, that this man from the middle of nowhere in England (Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire) was such an epic songwriter. It was the sense that you shouldn’t give up on anything – any dream – even if it seems completely implausible.’

An earlier track (2019), ‘3 Minute Faltz’ is close, subject-wise, to ‘Total Abject Paranoia’ but is ‘more of a rant’, according to Rob. ‘I wrote that with Mickey in his garage. It was a list of faults that was supposed to be two minutes but ended up being three, with the ‘falz’ being a play on ‘waltz’.’

He is a big fan of Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and Kate Rusby. ‘I love the way she reimagines old folk songs,’ he said. ‘My favourite songs transport you back to when you started to love them, the music has layers.’

One song he really wishes he’d written is Paul Simon’s ‘Slip Slidin’ Away’: ‘Last week, I was sitting at the kitchen table painting with my two daughters and listening to it. I love the harmonies in it and the bass part. But if you ask me tomorrow, I’ll probably give you a different answer!’

Rob is also very mindful that some talented bands fall by the wayside and cites The Embassy, a local band that never made it big: ‘They never made it on a national level but we had some of the most magical moments watching them – the memories of those nights! When we were kids, they were THE band. We used to steal their ideas! They used to cover up the ads on their instruments when they played, now we do that in homage to them.’