Here you’ll find all promotional materials for the Goldstar roster.

You’ll find biographys, press clips, promo photos and release art for use in magazines, fanzines etc.

All of the photos are in hi-res 300 dpi, for print. The photos are free to publish in magazines, fanzines and other printed or web-based media. Some files are in .pdf format and require Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Blue Cathedral cover art
(JPG - Size 1.2 MB)

Avatar cover art
(JPG - Size 1.0 MB)

2006 Photo Credit J Bennett 1
(JPG - Size 612.5 KB)

2006 Photo Credit J Bennett 2
(JPG - Size 493.0 KB)

Comets On Fire

After 2004's critically acclaimed Blue Cathedral, one might have expected Comets on Fire to blast off into the cosmos in an infinite flurry of lysergic spasmodicism. Surprising, then, that they should turn in an earthy, more accessible and downright beautiful album as their follow-up. Then again, it is a completely logical progression, but in reverse, sort of.

Harnessing the most crucial elements of freeform classic rock, AM gold, and the never-ending, occasionally psychotropic possibilities of their combined instrumentation, Comets On Fire have produced the seven-song, 46-minute long player Avatar comparable to that long-lost psych-gem from 1973 that the janitor found under a trapdoor at Electric Ladyland, only without all the dust and, like, tape degeneration.

Recorded in the shadow of a chicken farm at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, California (Tom Waits recorded Bone Machine there, dude) with Fucking Champs guitarist and perennial studio sorcerer Tim Green (Melvins, Pearls & Brass, etc.), Avatar is a Hammond-enhanced journey to the centre of the riff that basks in the fuzzy outer limits of rock’s myriad extrapolations before swooping down, hawk-like, for the long slow goodbye. Whereas Blue Cathedral reveled in the reverb-soaked pleasures of lysergic garage freakouts, feedback witchery, and action-rock improv, Avatar is the result of nine months of fastidious planning, each glorious note and honeyed melody carefully coaxed to its harmonic ideal. The Comets still improvise—and “freak out”—of course (in fact, the new songs are already being reworked in real time when the band plays live), but when you hear the beatific piano ballad “Lucifer’s Memory” and euphoric closer “Hatched Upon the Age,” you’ll understand why Avatar had to be laid to tape just so. It is, in a word (okay, three), totally fucking sweet.

In the years since the release of Blue Cathedral, the Comets’ achievements—both together and individually—have been many: The band performed live demonstrations both foreign and domestic (with the likes of Growing, Wolf Eyes, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.), recorded split LPs with Burning Star Core, upended Arthurfest in Los Angeles, and received an invitation (from Mudhoney, no less) to play this year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in the UK. Meanwhile, Chas re-affirmed his status as a fully ordained folk champion with the release of Six Organs Of Admittance’s School of the Flower (its successor is already on the way); Ethan joined forces with John Moloney of Sunburned Hand of the Man to record the Howlin’ Rain album; Utrillo got his Bill Fay/Procol Harum on with Colossal Yes, and Noel went temporarily solo (and totally batshit) with Noel Von Harmonson’s Born on the Fourth Of July.

On their fourth album, Avatar Comets display development in every direction: as musicians, as songwriters, as arrangers and as singers (?!), without sacrificing one ounce of the intensity that is expected from our heroes. As on Blue Cathedral, the diversity of the material is staggering – veering from swinging, bluesy explorations to piano-laced, progressive power balladry, to pure tribalism, evoking everyone from the Allmans, to Quicksilver, to Procol Harum, to some insane Fela/Sun Ra/Crazy Horse hybrid, yet remains wholly Comets on Fire. Though they play cleaner and clearer, their firepower is evident and abundant.

They have shifted gears and opened themselves up completely. You should do the same.