I got a chance to talk to Brad from Loud and Clear Records a little while back and should have an MP3 interview posted next week about running the label and pressing singles throughout their 10 year history, like this split single from 2004 from Comfortable for You and Goodbye Blue Monday. From the looks of things I'm guessing both of these San Diego based bands don't exist in these form anymore, but it's interesting to hear this kind of mathy hardcore coming out of San Diego around the time of At The Drive In and The Dismemberment Plan.
Comfortable For You kicked off the A-side with, "He plays in the key of bitchin'". This almost had me thinking it was going to be completely instrumental, all the mathy combinations of guitars, heavily split between channels, deep gutteral distortions.
Steve on one of those guitars and vocals has a really high register vocal, when he isn't sounding controlled, it's going for a losing control screech, sort of the exact opposite of that bass-y cookie monster vocal style....makes sense.
The guitars are driving whatever weird looped rhythm they feel like, leaving it up to the drums to try to ground this into somewhat of a regimented hardcore, they both end up nailing it and leave these guitars off on their own to create walls of distortion bursts and delicate fingerpicking, right into that verse melody. He's clearly going for a real tortured vocal, and almost playing with the delivery in the same way as both guitars, going for something that's equally as dynamic.
The B-Side is from Goodbyle Blue Monday "Pull the right strings" and Brad was right in thinking these guys were made for each other, it's a perfect split single marriage. If you were into one, you'd be a fan of the other. Their odd rhythm guitar melody gets worked right into a punishing massive beat, it's the same setup as CFY even... bass drums, two guitars, with different results within the genre. Everything drops out for a measure to focus on this guitar part, going from math right to a kind of emo sound
from 6 years ago now, when those two things were regularly colliding. This breakdown part has some crazy weird effect which gives the bass a chance to get slightly experimental. Eventually a distorted vocals kind of comes in Helmet style with that similar huge hitting sound, with more optimism, none of the doom and gloom of todays boom. How it sounds hopeful shouldn't make sense, but they pull this off. A refrain of the picked distortion and then silence. They've spent days trying to pull that off.
On clear red vinyl from Loud and Clear Records.
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