Next Ghostland post is going to lean somewhat heavily on a band that you’ve probably never heard before. So I’m putting up this post as a primer. If you’re interested in hearing a rather novel band with a quite unique sound, below is a selection of songs I am temporarily putting out there for your benefit.
I also have descriptions of the subject matter of the songs, which were difficult because they’re one of those bands that are not necessarily straightforward with their lyrics. But they toe rather closely to a common theme where if you hear a few songs, they all start making a little more sense in their own quirky way. They’re also rather hard to classify. They’re usually shuffled under “alt country” but the label really doesn’t fit except in the early Wilco sense. It’s more a cross between rootsy rock and alternative in a haze of copious amounts of marijuana.
I will introduce the band more properly in a couple of days.
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This one is, in my opinion, their best song. One of their best sounding songs, anyway, for sure. It involves the narrator who is feeling along and isolated and amidst darkness and trying to, in a sense, break free. He is presumably singing it to the woman who is the one thing (other than a functioning feature on his automobile and maybe an astrological phenomenon) right in his life.
A song concerning what, precisely, happens after a guy with a tenuous grip on domestic competence is left disentangle the woman that held it all together from his life and memories.
Narrator: Man, my life is going down the crapper. My mind is too muddy to even contemplate it all. But you’re free to watch and participate if you would like.
This song will be heavily featured in the post, so I don’t want to say too much about it except that it’s about having difficulty connecting with someone of the opposite gender.
Though this one encapsulates the nature of the band when it chooses to make sense. It perhaps encapsulates the faults of the stereotypical Generation X as the narrator tries to convince his lady-friend to do a plethora of things that she shouldn’t do including but not limited to fornication, illicit substances, and fiscal irresponsibility.
This is a song that encapsulates the band when it chooses to make less sense. A clump of clumsy yet imaginative metaphors that hop around from one to the next while he tries to say “Hey babe, life is tough and I guess things didn’t go the way you might have liked. I’d love to help, but man, that’s just tough. But know that I wish I could help. Totally.”
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