COMFORT
‘Comfort’ is a word that implies safety, convention, it’s connotations are parental, soft and neutral. For a band whose music and live performance is deeply original, emotional and challenging, the innocuous band name is an initial challenge to expectations.
Sibling duo Natalie and Sean have a shared passion for music and political activism, sending each other track ideas online as they lived in separate places. They moved to Glasgow with the intention of forming the band, and there they found a supportive music scene despite sounding different to everything else there.
Comfort’s simple set up of Sean on drums and Nat as magnetic frontwoman, backed with industrial soundscapes and off-kilter electronic sub beats is anything but conventional, and they have a genuine desire to inspire other people in Glasgow to express themselves confidently.
The songwriting process begins with the electronics, then drums and vocals are added last.
Nat has always written and read poetry and these as well as personal experiences inspire her lyric writing. With a largely instinctual working relationship and family bond, they do not discuss writing beforehand and the progressions occur organically during a practice, requiring no words or pre-planning.
Their debut album, Not Passing, was released in 2019 and ever since they have been working on new music.
Citing hip-hop, politics and dance music as their main influences, Comfort are something entirely idiosyncratic. Their sheer live power leaves audiences excited and wild-eyed, and their energy is infectious, as is the rawness of their messages. They create with a unique formal approach, rejecting concepts of how music is supposed to be written and produced.
The confrontation in their music is a sheer reflection of anger at the world’s intense injustices as well as a free outlet of self-expression. The assertion that all art is essentially political runs through their work and Comfort’s anger comes from the injustices they see around them constantly. Their stance is that artists who choose to make work that ignores these issues is anything but apolitical:
“Silence implies that there is no problem, the status quo is fine, it works for you, so why bother talking about it. We do not make music to be nice, or sit easy with people, we are angry, and we mean every word. Things need to change, and if music is to reflect the times, then it must reflect that today”
This isn’t to say the band’s music is unengaging or even totally aggressive; much of what they do involves ‘taking something ugly and making it beautiful or danceable’. They seek to empower and liberate people from societal pressures, from themselves, and from everything that subjugates.
They note that the experiences of those who face prejudice are often put up for "debate" by mainstream media platforms, and the intensity and delivery of their performance forces people to listen.
What can be taken away from their music is ‘that nothing is set in stone, norms should be questioned and resisted and when things no longer serve us, they must be destroyed. That trans people are beautiful. To have been made to go unheard does not mean that you have to be apologetic. To be ignored does not mean that you have nothing valid to say. Your voice is power’.
