Album Details

• Artist: Comsat Angels
• Album: My Mind's Eye
• Label: Renascent
• Year of Release: 1992
• Original Release: 2007
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: charlesmartel on 2012-08-26

It took them ten years, and a new record label, to produce the album they finally wanted to. And this is it. "My Mind's Eye" is, if you like, a sort of reunion album for a band who never went away. It is an album which was over ten years in the making in the sense that it took ten years for the band to produce an album they were truly satisfied with. No wonder the band's frontman writes on the liner notes that this was their favourite album.

The consequence is an album by a band which sounds happy, at last, with the sound it is producing. This is indeed a change for such was the tension between band and record company in the past that, at one point, the band had returned a first pressing of one of their albums by breaking it into pieces and stuffing it through the record company's letterbox.

The sharp guitars, strong rhythm section and the booming drums are still present, but gone are the themes of alienation and the doom laden sound to the music. The songs are brighter and happier, but still contain the musical spirit of their former style. A typical example of this is the opener, "Driving", two versions of which appear on this Renascent reissue. Undoubtedly the strongest track on the album, it has a superb, cascading riff which runs throughout the track, occasionally overlaid by some feedback laden screeching which would not have been out of place in 1981. Alongside this sits "Field of Tall Flowers" (again with two versions on the album) which has another sterling riff but with a lyrical theme of not wanting the summer to end.

Elsewhere on the album, the band cover themes of spiritualism, with the gloomy sounding "Shiva Descending" and quantum physics on "And All the Stars". They can even produce a good up-tempo rocker when they put their mind to it - "Beautiful Monster". No wonder they felt so good about this album. It is a real pity that they had not come out with this a decade before for it would have ranked up there with some of the post-punk greats.

This remaster has the added bonus, as previously noted, of three remixed versions of songs from the original album included, as well as three b-sides and offcuts which never made it to the original but lack none of the energy and mastery of it. Renascent are to be applauded for reissuing this. It is a pity that Jive did not have the foresight to do it when they had the chance in 1982 instead of trying to turn the band into unwilling Simon Le Bon clones.

User Reviews and Comments

on 2011-03-11 CharlesMartel Said:

Probably the band's best album, but one which came well after their post punk era
Rating: 8/10