If you’re lucky to be raised away from the big city, you get used to the stories old people tell. Many of them are shadowy, and a school counsellor might frown at these being told to a young child. But you end up missing them the moment you’re forced to grow up and move out.
You might find yourself rambling the streets of your adopted city looking for someone who’ll tell you similar tales. You’ll search in old libraries, record shops and ask the local eccentrics for some help. A need was created, and nothing else will do.
The Gothtones write shadowy, dark rock n’ roll ghost stories for all the adults who haven’t quite been able to shake the absence from their lives. “Gothtones” isn’t interested in bumping into something evil. All it once is to make out shapes out of fading mist.
Check out the album’s opening number, “Piranha,” a track whose production brings to mind the 1960s light horror pop singles of Screaming Lord Sutch. This collection of songs is all about thrills, but scary and funny ones.
Next, “The Two of Us,” true to the band’s name, embraces the soaring synths of 1980s goth bands and, in the verse, the deep baritone vocals to go along with those. But the clouds part for the glorious pop chorus, making this a rare find – a true-blue gothic-rock love song.
And with that in mind, think of songs like “Tragedy Menagerie” or “Skin and Bones” as the natural progression from the impossibly cool, romantic and slightly disturbing duets of Serge Gainsbourg with Jane Birkin or Brigitte Bardot.
Really, the Gothtones find old solutions to modern problems. The moodiness of “Requiem in Blue” adds a warm blanket over today’s melancholy. The and response vocals of “Midnight and Holly” feel as familiar as an old childhood toy.
It all seems designed to make you feel that all the stories that scared you when you were a kid must’ve prepared you for today. It all seems to whisper that none of these is real. They’re just old ghost tales.
And while “The Countdown,” possibly the album’s best song, finds more eeriness in the kinds of bass riffs, keyboard sounds and vocal melodies that, once again, cleverly quote from the sounds of 1960s novelty horror singles, the band knows more than to live you having to wash away a sour taste.
The garage-rock sing-along of “Gimme Sunshine” is as hopeful as the name suggests, with music that seems lifted straight out of some old children’s Sunday television show. Just wait for it. You’ll start missing those old ghostly tales.
