The Best Halloween Record

by Alexandra Molotkow

…Is, in my humble view, First Utterance by Comus, an English prog-folk band formed by art students who played their instruments well and developed an entire mythology inspired by John Milton’s Comus masque and English folklore and acid trips. (The cover was drawn in ballpoint pen by the band’s leader, Roger Wootton.) They palled around with David Bowie, playing a residency at a pub night he organized and supporting him in concert. But the album sold poorly, and the band frayed off.

I guess it should have a trigger warning. Treat it like a horror movie. Comus is the greek god of revelry; in this account, he’s a horny monster hopped up on virgin sacrifice and voluptuous death. There’s blood and “ravishment” (by demon) and Christian martyrdom, but the camp factor, along with the nerdy, operatic male vocals, take the sting out. Deep Pagan, as imagined by English art students in the late 1960s/early ’70s, and if you love that stuff, like I do — all the charm of a rural idyll with enough of the sinister to not be boring — this is as committed as it gets.

I have a tendency, when I listen to these bands from a few decades back, to believe them. At least, I’m more credulous than I would be of a contemporary act with the same sound and set of interests. But art students in 2015 are, of course, a lot like art students in 1967: messing around with friends, adapting tradition — religion, mythology, astrology — to their interests, and building their own homes in history. We are all in history! It took me a while to get that.