Glass Ghost
A Pulse Of Lovely Ice And Numbness
Sep 21, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Home For The Holidays
unreleased
This is a brand new track. It is one of our favorite new songs. When we arrived at the Daytrotter studio, we had just learned it and we were really excited to play it. The studio looked so cool! We thought we had nailed it on the first take. Unfortunatley, we found out that the first take had gotten erased! The other takes were pretty good too . Since this session, we have re-arranged the song.
The words of this song are about those times when you get away from all of the daily distractions of life. You get into a space where you are dealing with a more naked version of yourself . In the middle of the song, the main character is back in his childhood home, and he goes outside at midnight. He has a vision of a tigers face, who has also stepped outside of his own home. In a sense I think he is looking in the mirror, and his vision of the wild tigers face stepping out of his cage is really his own.
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Like A Diamond
original version appears on Idol Omen
We have also played this song from the beginning. I remember when it all came together. I was was in my room exploring a few notes on the piano that sounded natural for my voice. The song flowed out in about 30 mins. I went over to Mikes room to play. He immediately put this incredible beat over it , and it just jelled so quickly. We both listened to it on my digital recorder and got really excited! It will be on our upcoming album. It will also be featured on the new HBO show 'Bored to Death' staring Jason Schwartzman and Zach Galifanakis. It going to be played in a scene where someone is smoking invincible pot. That will be trippy to watch!
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Bright Circumstance
unreleased
This is a brand new song. It won't be on our upcoming album. The words of this song are about someone who has been given good oppurtunities in life. He has been able to follow his dreams. But then he asks : What if things weren't like this?. He looks in the mirror, and he asks: What if I had a different upbringing? What if I was brought up under more difficult circumstances? Is who I am colored by the positive oppurtunies that I have had? Is it by chance that I have succeded? What about those whose lives have been much harder than mine? It could have easily been him whose life was shattered or stunted. In a way, he realizes that he is that other person. He starts to develop a wider compassion towards others, and realize how incredibly lucky he is.
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Divisions
original version appears on Idol Omen
We have played this song from the beginning. We used to practice it in Mikes bedroom, under his loft bed. I would borrow Dave Sheinkopf's (from the Subjects) Wurlitzer keyboard. He lived in the next room. That was a really new and exciting time in our development. We still play it at almost all of our shows. It is on our upcoming album 'Idol Omen' . It's a particularly hard song for us to play because of the detail and focus that it takes to pull it off. I love playing it and how it continues to develop live.
When you fall asleep on your arm or something pinches in your leg and it goes numb, it's a sensation that there's little anyone can do to recreate without doing irreparable damage. There's no control to be had when those parts conk out. The legs lose all their mandatory rigidity and just crumble into immobile lumps of knees and flesh. Arms, as the blood starts rushing back into them are freakish, gradually able to do more and fairly quickly regaining their feeling, as a blush sets into the veins, a pulse of realization that they're required again to do something and maybe that's just to fork some coleslaw or rub an eyelash from a eye's corner. As that blood moves back into its place, feeling like ice as it does so, it's then that we can sense that we're still here, that all of the parts are still able to take commands and nourishment. Brooklyn duo Glass Ghost makes music that could be taken for these sorts of reassurances that the intrusions - even temporary ones - are gone again for the moment. Singer and synth maestro Eliot Krimsky and drummer Mike Johnson are the blood getting back to doing what it was born to do and that's to be so effective and so valuable and beautiful in its movements that it's blind lightning or silent thunder. It's felt by the skin more than anything, stinging the pores and the tiny hairs that stand on end every time the charge flushes the room. Krimsky finds ways to send you shivers with his Neil Young-like falsetto, giving it a touch of the Arctic Sea though, instead of California. It sounds as if it has been forced into seclusion in some desolate location, with just the songs to keep it practiced. It has a spectacular coolness that just melts into you, leaving you dry-mouthed and wide-eyed. The rhythms that Johnson adds to these songs of immaculate self-discovery - songs that feel as if they are the less conceptual cousins of the songs that Midlake wrote for "The Trials of Van Occupanther" - are expressive and woodsy. The overall tone of the band's debut album, "Idol Omen," is one of gorgeous patience and stepping lightly into this new world that's painted silver and frozen blue, white and light pink, a world that begins and ends with someone before a fire, trying to warm themselves back to an operative state, where they can enjoy the tea that's on the stove, the laughter and fresh air in the distance and the way that it makes you feel to recover from a numbing. Glass Ghost music is Sunday afternoon and it's such tranquil chaos as well, with Krimsky singing about ancient tigers on occasion and delving into matters that have no happy endings - when sensitivity leaves and all that's left is a quaint recollection of what is supposed to be felt. Krimsky sings on "Like A Diamond," "I really don't know why, but I have a sense I'm not feeling, a sea of eyes and a field of wolves and a hurricane and a silent song and a tiger's look and a wall of arms, like an open heart, like a diamond," giving us a close listen to a soul seeking.
Glass Ghost MySpace Page
Western Vinyl Records
