Guest Musician 4th May 2010

Simon Comber's first album Pre-Pill Love (2006) introduced New Zealand to a songwriter of quiet insight and shrewd economy. Written whilst Comber was based in Dunedin, and co-produced with such musical luminaries as Edmund McWilliams (Bressa Creeting Cake) and Graeme Downes (The Verlaines), songs like Early Spring Rain, Sunday Horrors and Marylands said what they had to say (on topics ranging from watching horror movies with the one you love to child abuse) and got the hell out, occasionally not even breaking the 2 minute mark. Since releasing Pre-Pill Love Comber has moved back to Auckland from whence he came, and more importantly, written material for a follow up album. His sophomore release Endearance has for the most part traded acoustic for electric guitar, and is in some ways the folk-rock counterpart to his folk-pop debut. Though his love of narrative songwriting has not diminished, with songs like The Jaws of Life staring down the barrel of family dysfunction with a characteristic candour, the instrumentation makes its presence felt more on the new record. Nobility, a meditative, lyrically existentialist piece, tips its hat to sixties psychedelia, and the title track, a haunting homage to the music of John Fahey, is the first purely instrumental composition Comber has written. Recorded at the Masonic Lodge in Port Chalmers outside of Dunedin. Comber enlisted the help of Dale Cotton (Conray), Darren Stedman (The Verlaines) and Tom Healy (The Low Spark) to contribute engineering, drums and bass respectively and help bring his new songs to fruition.