EDIT: As it turns out there's a fairly icky situation that went on with a member of this band, at least according to another member. Well, the details and interpretation are disputed but no one's denying that ultimately one of the guitarists left the band over the bassist dating an 18 year old when he was 30. I didn't find out until the very end of writing this post. There's a link below to the ex-member's statement.
I'm gonna let y'all in on a secret: I had a reason for picking out the first two albums I reviewed for this blog. See, I expect that there's going to be a lot of dross on these pages because most things put out into the world are mediocre. The interesting looking albums I find that are online? For the vast majority of them I get 30 seconds into one song then push stop and put the disc back on the rack. I'm prepared for a similar experience as I go through these (except that I plan to suffer through entire albums of undistinguished suck in order to give a full report) but I wanted to kick things off with a few records that would have genuine musical goodness, or at least interest. I'd listened to the Bretheren Sol album already; it was my post about it on Facebook that caused a friend to suggest this blog, so I knew it had a strong interest factor. Kazumi Watanabe was an easy second choice; everything about that album screamed that even if I didn't like it it wouldn't be dull. I was reaching for another almost guaranteed to be interesting album (non-standard band line-up) for post number three when it occurred to me that I have very few of those and, having done a strong one-two punch opening, I should dole them out more slowly to break up what the odds say will be long strings of "I can see why no one bothered putting this online, what I can't see is why anyone bothered recording it."
I still hedged a little in that Bear Ghost's album art is super cool, but anyone who's been a record collector for more than five minutes knows that doesn't guarantee anything. I was fully expecting run of the mill indie and got something very different. Not only is this not what I was expecting, I'm not really sure what "this" is.
Don't get me wrong, it's identifiable as rock and there's much stranger music out there, but any album that immediately reminds me of Primus then adds 8-bit keyboards, pieces of ska that don't sound like ska in this context, surf music, cheerleader chants, quality vocal harmonies, and British music hall is still pretty damn weird.
Let's break down that bizarre sonic stew. First, let me reassure the ska-phobic that this is not remotely a ska record. More than anything the drum sound reminds me very strongly of Reel Big Fish's Turn The Radio Off and Less Than Jake's Losing Streak. Other than that there's traces of it in some of the bouncy rhythms such as Starkiller, but only as one ingredient in the stew. That same bounce when paired with loud guitars and heavy beats is where I'm getting Primus and/or Rob Zombie: it's not funk bass, but it can see funk bass without a telescope.
Speaking of Starkiller, that's where the "additional vocalists" show up:
Gohil, Hori, and Moss sing a chant that's kind of like a cheerleader deal and kind of like an excerpt from a theme song for a non-existent cheesy superhero show. It's also the first appearance of the surf rock guitar.
The English music hall thing is in several places. At least, I think that's what it is. What it really reminds me of is Rosalie Cunningham's melodies, both solo and in Purson, and I'm pretty sure that's where she gets them from.
If you're wondering how all those disparate influences can possibly hang together, let me tell you that this sucker is arranged within an inch of its life. Not in the sense that it's sterile or mechanical, but in the sense that Bear Ghost matched their tuneful songs with all kinds of extra touches and details, and understood exactly how to mix them in. There are no guitar solos, but Necromancin' Dancin' has some unexpected squalling leads that punctuate the moment all the harder for how rare they are on the album. Paradise opens with an a capella intro. Not just as in vocals with no instruments, I mean the singing's like an actual a capella group. Then there's the Spanish influence on Hola Adriana (where the castanets show up), the locked in syncopated rhythms and fat tribal beat of on All At Once, and. . .suddenly the seeming disconnect between the amount of care and effort that went into it and the album title make sense: it's not too cool for school irony, it's that they're damn weird and have a sense of humor.
The one unifying element is the vocal and guitar sound. Both remind me a lot of late 1990s/early 2000s pop punk, when punk developed crunching power chords, but you'd never call Blasterpiece pop punk, or any kind of punk, any more than it's really indie rock in any sense other than being literal independent rock music. It's a really good and unique album, and it amazes me that it's not on YouTube. Or it did until I found out it's been up there since it came out in 2016. I swear, it did not come up when I searched previously. Weird. Oh well, I got a quality surprise and a review out of it at least. Although now I wonder if was taken down or hidden at some point because of. . .well. . .this. The timeframe does fit with when I found the album.
Well shit. I don't go looking for info online until I've finished the review so. . .this is me finding out in real time.
Well, to end on a dull technical note, Discogs claims this is a CDR but it looks like the real deal to me.
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