In the mid-eighties during my first year at university and very much taken by McComb's band The Triffids I went to see them playing a small venue in North London with a university friend. I remember very little about the gig except that they were very good but one moment did stay with me. At one point McComb, a toweringly tall figure, suddenly stretched out his arms horizontally from his shoulders. They ranged across the stage in crucifix form reminding you of nothing so much as a condor in flight.
McComb was a rare talent and a great loss to music. In The Triffids early, idiosyncratic records and in their masterpieces Born Sandy Devotional and In The Pines, they documented an intense, distinctive, humorous, and poetic literary landscape that still rewards the listener thirty years. Songwriters rarely capture this deep, evocative lyricism anymore. I still listen to Born Sandy Devotional just about every month and probably always will.
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