Award winning Prince Edward Island based graphic designer Paul Atwood recently expanded the focus of his art from the visual to the musical through a steady flow of releases made available on his Bandcamp page. Admittedly not a winter person, Atwood explained recently, “I get pretty cooped up in the wintertime, so to help pass the season I’ve been writing and recording a few more pop tunes for my little project”. Calling himself Comfort Decade the 20-year-old Atwood, originally from Corner Brook, Newfoundland, raised in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, has issued two singles and the digital EP Murmur since September of 2018. His debut album Orbit The Room was released the first week of February 2019 with a cassette version expected later on this year from PEI’s High Trash Media.

Clocking in at a brisk 19 minutes Orbit The Room is a short and pithy listen. Recorded entirely in Atwood’s bedroom in the Charlottetown apartment he shares with a roommate, all but two of the album’s tracks are under the three-minute mark. Poignant, poetic and poppy Orbit The Room’s seven tracks veer from sad to sublime. One moment Atwood bemoans his way through the intimate bedroom pop of Lost At Sea and Intercontinental Heartbreak No. 1, a moment later he is positively jubilant driving home tracks Carnival Weekend and Human Profile.

Atwood’s apt and jangly melodic guitar work features prominently throughout much of Orbit The Room as well as his distant and disembodied sounding vocals. Invoking the ghost of Ian Curtis (most notably on tracks Bridges Revisited and Carnival Weekend) as well as channelling the pop pathos and black and white iconography of early Smiths records, Atwood at times hints at the recently departed Pete Shelley and his foretelling fusion of melody and rage (Human Profile).

Although having recorded everything himself for Orbit The Room Atwood is by no means averse to expanding the confines of his auteur oriented one-person-show approach to making records, saying recently, “I enjoyed the hands-on experience of recording and mixing every part of a song myself, but recently I have had the privilege of being able to work with other musicians on turning Comfort Decade into a live band. Working collaboratively has been going really well, so I definitely wouldn’t shy away from having other musicians on the next project”.

A one-time member of PEI experimental noise pop rock band Clay Fraser, Atwood is not sweating the pressure to please a crowd. “It’s a total hobby and I like it that way. I think it’s important to have a pastime that you care a lot about, but it doesn’t matter if it pays bills. I like music because I don’t have any obligation to please a crowd with it. If it does that’s amazing! If not, at least it makes me happy”.

Comfort Decade’s debut album Orbit The Room is available now on Bandcamp, Apple Music and Spotify. Comfort Decade will be performing live at the upcoming Charlottetown Punk & Hardcore Shows sponsored All-Ages Show this coming Saturday, February 16^th at the PEI Farm Centre 420 University Avenue, Charlottetown PEI with Wroth, Absolute Losers, Dead Man’s Ride and John Lewis. Showtime 6-9:30 PM. Admission $7-$10 (no one turned away for lack of funds).

2019 Song Of The Day Club 4/52