Comets On Fire
Avatar
There it is--the album that you never remember to bring up in conversation when you're arguing about the Liars, why The Hold Steady is a good band, and whether or not listening to the Raconteurs will turn you gay. (They will.) But when they come up on shuffle, here it was: the album that reminds you that calling Death Cab indie rock is, quite literally, a blasphemy in terms. Avatar is what rock sounds like, it's what you and I think about when we tell somebody when they ask us how Half-Nelson was--we say, "It f--king rocks." We aren't thinking about Ryan Adams, we aren't thinking about the Decemberists--we're thinking about Avatar, whether we know it or not. Hanging around the junkyard, the campfire and wherever else bearded drunks go, Comets On Fire have been doing whatever they feel like for years now, and when it came 2006, they decided they were going to remind everybody what the Strokes have been trying to make us forget: that there wasn't anything wrong with liking Led Zeppelin in middle school. Avatar is up to the minute enough to stand toe to toe against Mastodon and Boris, and it walked away with the crown because it liked having fun a hell of a lot more than they did. If you wanted somebody to rock your body in 2006, you went with Timberlake: but if you just wanted to rawk, than Avatar was the way things went down.
-Tucker Stone, 2006
Howlin Rain was another album that should've gotten a lot more love for rekindling people's van-loving power chords, and this recommendation goes straight out to any holiday drivers who are able to hang an arm out of an open window--you'll beat a dent into the door frame.
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