Consumer Guide Album

Comet Gain: City Fallen Leaves [Kill Rock Stars, 2005]
These Brits always had the right sound but never the right songs, and now they've probably found their jangle-punk tune sense too late. The title sums up an autumnal mood as unlikely to excite site-hopping hot-new-banders as the grim statistic that this is their seventh album. But as a 30-ish look back at a life untriumphant because you weren't quite talented enough, it's superb. The indie-rock scene anchors the details, but the story told by the pensive "Days I Forgot to Write Down" and the headlong "Just One More Summer Before I Go" are for anyone who didn't fucking get what they wanted and still fucking lost what they had. A-