- Release Info -------------------------------------------------------------- -
Artist: Glass Ghost
Album: Idol Omen
Label: Western Vinyl
Playtime: 31:11 min
Genre: Indie
URL: http://myspace.com/glassghost
Rip date: 2009-12-26
Street date: 2009-12-00
Size: 42.28 MB
Type: Normal
Quality: 180 kbps / 4410kHz / Joint Stereo
- Release Notes ------------------------------------------------------------- -
The music of Glass Ghost, a Brooklyn duo assisted on Idol Omen by guest stars
like Luke Temple and Joan Wasser, is eerie and elusive-- the musical
equivalent of a word on the tip of your tongue. Eliot Krimsky sings about
everyday mysteries in a relaxed, uncanny falsetto, tending to keyboards that
dryly flicker and drone. Instruments from the classical world, as well as
various junk percussion and vocal harmonies, meld unobtrusively, with the
same laconic drift. The songs feel paradoxically compact and diffused, thanks
to Mike Johnson's careful blend of live and electronic drums. His
gauze-wrapped take on hip-hop makes all the wispy scrollwork feel
unaccountably durable and lively.
Just looking through Glass Ghost's early press clues you in to the
difficulties of classifying them-- people have already cited Deerhoof,
Captain Beefheart, Dirty Projectors, and J Dilla, comparisons that range from
approximate to baffling. Glass Ghost truly resemble just one band I can think
of, and them only abstractly: the Dismemberment Plan circa Change, whittled
down to the most salient gestures. It's all there on opening track "Time
Saving Trick"-- the hip-hop swing disarticulated in shining banks of fog, the
wafting existentialism, the unspoken melancholy. And "Mechanical Life", with
pointillist bass and skating keyboards, is mostly about brushing your teeth
in a mirror. It perfectly captures the sort of mundane, displaced, anxious
introspection that the Dismemberment Plan borrowed from Talking Heads and ran
with so fruitfully.
That said, Glass Ghost is less lovable than the Dismemberment Plan-- perhaps
less ingratiating. They're relentlessly sleepy and captivating, all
"Sentimental Man" and no "Following Through". The complacent tonal register,
Krimsky's dusky singing, and the deliberate scrawniness of the music all
promise to be highly divisive, as most unique things are. And there are a few
moments when the taste level falters-- on "Ending", when Krimsky sings,
"There's a place way up high where I hold my soul and cry," you hope he gets
back to cryptic circumlocution quickly. "The Same" sports a poppier, more
bugged-out look that Glass Ghost wear a bit less comfortably than swirling
evasion. They're at their best on "Time Saving Device" and "Mechanical Life",
not to mention "Divisions", with its ice-drop synth arpeggios, or "Like a
Diamond", where a piercing vocal melody floats over keyboards like reflected
clouds on scattered rain puddles. This is subtle, spooked, reflective music--
a distracted elegy for something or other.
- Track List ---------------------------------------------------------------- -
01. Time Saving Trick ( 3:31)
02. Mechanical Life ( 3:29)
03. Divisions ( 2:57)
04. The Same ( 5:04)
05. Like a Diamond ( 3:31)
06. Violence ( 2:32)
07. What I've Seen ( 5:00)
08. Ending ( 5:07)
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