Some bands are just crying out to be world famous. The world would be a better place if they were, but… The Comsat Angels were one of those “But…” groups. Having inflected their post-punk noise with Pere Ubu — inspired intensity, they watched whilst a bunch of Mancunians called Joy Division pulled the same trick and got all the credit. Undetered, they moved on.
Fiction was the Comsats’ third album and the work of a group confident in their own ability no matter what anyone else might think. Their existential musings were now coloured with Roxy-esque inflections and psychedelic touches which made the music more beau tiful, but no less melancholy. On “Pictures”, the guitar fades in and out of the static, almost not there, like a dying voice struggling to be heard. Elsewhere, the band’s down-to-earth humour (something that set them apart from the likes of Joy Division and The Cure) surfaces on “Birdman” — “Rocket USA, FireworkUK” , they intone, deadpan. The closer, “What Else?!” is devastatingly beautiful, as Steve Fellows tries to conjure some life into a depressed friend over Beatles harmonies, backwards guitar and post-punk bass throb.
The only eighties album to approach “Wilder” in greatness was released in 1981 to universal apathy. Soon, U2 would be megastars and the Comsat Angels would be dropped. There must have been something nasty in the water that year.