Chief Ghoul – Pretty Things
I always felt an affinity and a great amount of admiration for artists who have devoted their lives to investigating the darker side of human existence. Just like an addition, there aren’t really any days off from it. It’s a marathon run through uncertain terrain, I imagine.
Songwriters like these aren’t just made like everyone else. They must work to remain different from everyone else. That takes some serious commitment.
It may be all doom and gloom on Chief Ghoul’s Pretty Things, but this isn’t quite an invitation to a Black Mass so much as the office party right after the most pressing matters have been dealt with.
The lo-fi blues of the recording adds to the feeling that the music is reverberating from a different and strange time. The vocals are also noteworthy, and share some sinister qualities reminiscent of Mark Lanegan’s baritone. Lyrically this is a spooky ode to “all the girls and their sins“. Halloween comes just one time a year, and since that’s a real shame, let’s consider changing our ways and integrating artists like Chief Ghoul into our daily routines.
Yum Yuck – Flesh and Bone
The artwork of Yum Yuck’s Flesh and Bone is eye-grabbing in its cheerful, yet dirty depiction of summer days. The music underneath that image is much the same. A beautiful, crystal clear falsetto chirps over a groove that is colorful as it is menacing. This is an ode to cherishing your body and using it for all it’s worth.
In many ways that’s the best explanation I can hope to give about modern psychedelic music in general. A lot of people have fun with it. Some manage to expand their minds while accompanied by it. Some get terrible injuries while in its proximity.
As gorgeous as the arrangement to Flesh and Bone happens to be, much like a psychedelic experience there is nothing completely real about it. The love affair here is described in a way that transcends the trivial worries of everyday life. The instrumental and vocals flow over as if weightless.
Most remarkable is, of course, the production. While in the past stories of folks like Lindsey Buckingham living out most of their days stuck in a recording studio seemed eccentricities, they are now part of the course for the really ambitious one man bedroom recording orchestras. Yum Yuck is as good at creating this carefully layered sound as anybody in the game.
