Ghosty, Answers

by hiram lucke

Andrew Connor and Ghosty are classicists in the pop songwriting field. You’ll hear touches of Elliot Smith’s later studio creations, the Kinks and their sometimes-it-is-sometimes-it-isn’t-ironic nostalgia, ELO’s less blatant Beatles moments, and even a little bit of the folk rock of acts like America in the stoned sunshine of their brightly toned chords (think “Sister Golden Hair” without the “hey, baby, I’m a dude, you know, and dudes gotta be dudes, but you’re alright. I gotta go call this other girl”-ness of the lyrics; more on that in a bit). Ghosty isn’t a nostalgia act, though. They’ve got enough brains and chops to keep it flowing without bogging down the listener in the spot-the-influence swamp. In fact, the songs and riffs have tightened up quite a bit from their last album, Grow Up or Sleep In.

Lyrically, Andrew Connor moves the songs on Answers from the post-collegiate malaise of Grow Up… and into the questions of the working day and the seeming monotony of living an adult life. The cleverly titled “Dumbo Wins Again” starts with these lines:

Oh the place of my birth it was only an accident
Oh why else would I
Need to go to the ends of the earth just to find myself
Just to find myself some time?

Dumbo in this case wins not only because he has figured out how to fly by using his ears (or is it a meta-statement to the listener?), but by realizing that those who “seem so void of life” in the place that he stays do so because they’ve nowhere else to go. Throughout the album we see the same scenario over and over—characters fighting to stay hopeful against those obsessed with misery, guilt, themselves, and even moments of self-doubt and apathy. In the end, “I Won’t Be Stopped,” with its snail’s pace and Connor’s declarations of not giving in sounding like an exhausted boxer before the final bell, sounds like a rallying cry for those that believe that the battle to live through the mundane comes with making concessions and avoiding holes in the road even as you prepare for takeoff over and over again.

{www.oxbloodrecords.com}