It would be easy to write off The End of Comedy before listening: there’s that band name, as unpromising as you can get; there’s the promise that it journeys “through a whimsical world informed by Jean Baudrillard, social media perception, Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western vistas and [bandleader Michael] Collins’s endless travels”. If you say so, but whatever.
The End of Comedy turns out to be a lovely, brief record, like sunlight through leaves, all brightness and shadow intermingled. Like Tobias Jesso Jr, Collins sounds like he’s been paying close attention to Harry Nilsson and Emitt Rhodes: there’s a whole lot of post-Beatles comedown songwriting here. Even the perpetually creepy Ariel Pink can’t do any damage to Easy to Forget, a song as delicate and toothsome as spun sugar. It’s Only Raining Right Where You’re Standing is an excursion into the kind of psychedelia English groups fell heavily for in 1968 – all phased guitar and blank voice – so perfectly pitched that you can’t quite believe the lyrics aren’t about clementine monkeys and velveteen eyelashes or something. There is some filler – Theme for Alessandro is a needless instrumental that goes nowhere – but The End of Comedy is a delicious surprise.
