13ghosts The Strangest Colored Lights by: Tom Bradbury Wed:23-Apr-08 Label: Skybucket Year: 2008 WB rating 85 out of 100

Authenticity is a word that is often thrown around in music circles, and while it’s hard to pin down exactly what quality it is that makes a band authentic, you know it when you hear it. 13ghosts are a band that possess that indefinable quality. They have been around for a long time, and they sound like it. These guys have been through too much and learnt too much to bullshit on their records. 13ghosts own their material. A quality of world-worn weariness inhabits their new album The Strangest Colored Lights, a collection of post-apocalyptic bedtime stories for lovers of melancholic Americana, which ranges from country and blues to more typical indie fare.

Blessed with two talented and quite different songwriters and vocalists in Brad Armstrong and Buzz Russell, 13ghosts give The Strangest Colored Lights the feeling of a novel with multiple narrators – almost like a collection of vignettes. Somehow, though, there is a real sense of cohesion rather than the schizophrenic vibe that often afflicts bands with more than one songwriter. With Armstrong, the story is in the weathered gruffness of his voice more than any melody, and while there are very few vocalists whose voice alone is worth listening to, regardless of the quality of their songwriting, Armstrong is one of them. On tracks like ‘Soft Houses’, there is meaning imbued in every word, a kind of existential tiredness that cannot be synthesized but must be felt. Armstrong sings, "I can hardly hold my head up, I’ve been drinking too long", in one permanent sigh. Having dealt with the suicide of a former band member, it is not surprising that 13ghosts should have a Beat quality to them.

Yet The Strangest Colored Lights is not one long drawn out coda of despair, and this is partly due to the fact that the switch up between the two vocalists is very effective. Armstrong’s straight-off-the-ranch realism doesn’t become depressing as it is offset by the sharper tenor and the more melodic focus of Russel’s work. ‘Beyond The Door’, which comes after ‘Soft Houses’, is a total change of pace, a jaunty rocker by comparison, and Russel’s perky hook conjures flashbacks of early 90s slacker rock. On ‘Faint Goat’, he gives us his best ‘Ballad of A Thin Man’, perfectly capturing the paranoia that Dylan so expertly conveyed. Russel sings, “Hey Faint Goat, where’s your nanny now? /Has the dizziness made you feel so unsure?”, as a neurotic guitar solo encapsulates the confusion.

13 Ghosts excel at creating atmosphere and mood. The production on The Strangest Colored Lights is impeccable, and every song has a very complete sound to it. This is an extremely literary album; lyrics take on the form of short stories or characterizations, and nothing is wasted in the soundscape, every note and stray guitar strum somehow complementing the overall narrative vision. On ‘Bury Me’ sludgy guitars sound as if they are being dragged through the dirt; fitting, as the song deals with the act of burial. Armstrongs sings, “Bury me right where I fall/ And shovel the dirt on my face”. This is the sound of the frontier, the authentic American West, where life is transient and hardship flourishes. Hard red dirt clogs every pore of the album. Very few bands are able to create a worldview with sound, or their own universe, but this is precisely what 13ghosts have done on The Strangest Colored Lights.

The fullness of vision that 13ghosts achieve on The Strangest Colored Lights is remarkable, but it isn’t immediately apparent. Unlike a band such as the Arcade Fire, who have also created their own musical mise en scene, 13ghosts’ sound is not epic, but subtle. This is an album of beautiful weariness that can seep into your subconscious unnoticed, its power slowly crystallizing over time.