Fact: Comets on Fire have a dazzling new album on Subpop entitled Blue Cathedral.

Fact: Comets on Fire want you, their beloved friend, to live well.

Fact: Comets on Fire have recorded on the Sun, and captured the sounds for you.

Fact: "savage analog electronicist and vocal echoplex player" Sir Noel von Harmonson salvaged a few precious moments to allow us to tinker with his mind.
The textual results* follow (*Sub-fact: sometimes a one word answer is totally necessary):

+ So, I'm guessing it's an eye in a tree or maybe an elephant - but what is 'Blue Cathedral's album cover a mystery picture of?

Noel: It's a picture of an elephant indeed. This elephant has a disease which creates discolored (non-pigmented) areas on its skin. To take it and run, one might say that its expression is sympathetic and thoughtful of acceptance of the life cycle of all things. When disease enters the picture, things are much more unpredictable. So how do you live / keep living?

Underneath is a layer from series of burnt slide images that I did. We considered using them as the cover but it was, alas, even too abstract for us.

+ Since there are no lyrics to accompany 'Blue Cathedral', where do most of the song titles come from? Will the band eventually publish the lyrics anywhere?

The song titles come from our practices, when we're writing the songs. After we write the songs we rehearse them, at some point we give the songs secret "nicknames". Most of these never get out to the public. The lyrics are quite good, but so are a lot of the sounds. Perhaps Ethan (Miller) will become a published lyricist later in life and take on a kind of Burt Bacharach career.

+ Is there any pressure to recreate the Comets recorded sounds live?

That is what we do after we write the songs and rehearse them we either record them or play them live or both. Of course with some of these new organ/piano driven songs, they're not recreated live, we have enough garbage to drag around with us already. I can't imagine hauling a rhodes and an organ around with us, perhaps for our symphonic Yes phase that all the magazines are talking about - we'll bring them out then.

+ Was 'The Black Poodle' ('Field Recordings.. .') written for any particular pet / animal?

No.

+ Does anyone have a personal copy of that first (s/t, 2001) vinyl issue of 500?

Yes.

+ The references / influences pegged to Comets have been quite sporadic (Pink Floyd, Steppenwolf, Mudhoney) - who would you actually say are the higher beings the Comets salute?

All of these and more... ohhh geeze you know Stevie Ray Vaughan was actually a really incredible musician, a lot of people write him off as simply aping Hendrix or writing him off as "white blues" - but that guy could really shred. I mean it's really insane if you give it a chance, our music is basically "white blues", too.

+ Was the 'Bong Voyage' LP hinting at any influence the listener should take part in?

The "Bong Voyage" title is a joke from us and also at us. Alot of folks have thrown us into a stoner rock sort of arena, but the thing is we're not potheads at all! Mostly we drink a few Bud Lites® when we're jamming, but a bootleg should certainly have a sort of misguided and peculiar title and for all of our heavy-toking friends out there: we salute you, too.

If you want to believe that we're making music to smoke pot to that's fine. Do whatever you want if you listen to these records, just as long as you enjoy it. I believe the people who put that out actually named it "Bong Voyage" to make things more complicated.

+ SubPop! Where did that connection begin?

Its hard to say. We played a big show in Seattle a while back with Kinski (Subpop band) and a bunch of Subpop people were there. They kept talking about how much they liked us and how they listened to our last record at the office all of the time. We were like "why's that?" but they were all such great people.

So when it came down to it, we thought about the (Michael) Yonkers cd reissue they did and how they were wanting to do a Wolf Eyes record and suddenly we felt like we would be part of a very fucked and amazing community (along with the glory of Zach Cowie (rip) and Andy K).

+ Puff / P.Diddy recently launched a voting campaign whose motto is "Vote or Die"! With that kinda threat, who's voting for who?

I'm having a really hard time deciding which would be a better shirt to make: either Cecil Taylor or Arthur Doyle "for president" - not P Diddy.

 

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