Black Happy Day, In the Garden of Ghostflowers

by dave heaton

I was listening the other day to Plague Songs, the compilation of songs based on the biblical plagues, released as part of a high-concept art project involving staging a reenactment of the events on an abandoned island. It was all right – spooky in some places, confounding in others. But right after I listened to it, I put on In the Garden of Ghostflowers and immediately felt like it embodied everything the other album was striving for, but reached it more naturally. Here were two musicians playing songs, not a giant curated art project, but the result was similar (though better): creepy folk music exploring Old Testament-style themes of sin and redemption.

Black Happy Day use their own assortment of tricks, but more elemental ones: banjo, dulcimer, feedback, the human voice. This is eerie, spellbinding music, with an old-world folk side (sometimes directly adopting old English folk styles) but also a nightmarish lullaby one. "The winds bear sad tales of weeping / they wail for the dead," one especially creepy song goes. And indeed, death is everywhere here, embodied by the cover art drawing of a wolf eating a hare (sung about in the song "Wolf and Hare"). Loneliness, too, and death is the ultimate loneliness. Prayers and screams commingle here, in this garden, along with folk songs that twist the past, and life's eternal questions, into something bone-shaking.

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