Come – Don't Ask Don't Tell (2xLP)

In 1994 Come answered the cliché of the difficult second album with the hypnotic, intense and emotional masterpiece 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'.

With the original lineup of Thalia Zedek, Chris Brokaw, Sean O'Brien and Arthur Johnson, the Boston band expanded their sound by slowing down the tempos and creating a dense urban stream of consciousness that mixes noise, big city blues and catharsis. The album is one of the greatest dissident records ever made. This lovingly remastered, expanded edition includes "Wrong Sides," an additional album of B-sides and unreleased tracks, including the band's very first single "Car" and their last recorded song "Cimarron," which features the core lineup. These gems showcase the rawness and incredible growth of a band that has fully mastered their songwriting while paying tribute to their punk roots with beautiful renditions of Swell Map's 'Loin Of The Surf' and X's 'Adult Books'. The album also features new artwork with unreleased photos and fresh liner notes from the band.

Unlike traditional rock, this band plays music that seems to draw thematically and structurally from old Europe, from Eastern folklore and modernist classical music as much as from US and British rock. Departing from traditional notions of vocals and songwriting, Thalia's (formerly of Live Skull) presence in songs like 'Yr Reign' and the astonishing closing track 'Arrive' is not the brash self-aggrandizement of a lead singer, but the inner voice of the eternal migrant, someone who knows about survival, "Don't Ask Don't Tell" was written in a period of cohesion, a break from the tight and hectic touring schedule, in the come afters of 11's success: The Guitar Layers and Feedback are even more precise, the song structuring is more open and ambitious, and the album's overall narrative arc from 'Finish Line' to 'Arrive' is even more exquisitely realized and aligned.

"The songs on 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' had a kind of magic that we couldn't necessarily control ourselves." Chris Brokaw - Interview with Neil Kulkarni, 2013.

"Devastating, with slow, burning songs that shudder and wince." NY Times