Ghostkeeper
Ghostkeeper
2010 | CD / LP | FLCR020
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With their second album Ghostkeeper delivers an extraordinary marriage of noisy blues and pop in a complex and textured sounding recording. Revealing his Northern Alberta origins, the distinctive voice of Shane Ghostkeeper cuts through the serpentine knots of intricate guitar and thumping cave rhythms that punctuate the songs. The result is a mysterious, unusual and nuanced voice, infused with Mississippi roots and traditional folk idioms, invigorated with an ever-shifting collage of characteristically inventive and deliciously off-kilter experimental blues and psychedelia.
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- Tea and Cree Talking
- By Morning
- Don't Come Knocking
- Haunted
- Metis Running
- Like Moose Do
- Baby Girl
- Well, Well, Well
- Piggy backin' (do cost you no money)
- Spring Fever
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Calgary-based Ghostkeeper produces raw and electrifying music. A colourful patchwork of heartfelt, outsider blues and noisy pop, perhaps their music can be best understood through the distinctive Northern Alberta origins of Shane Ghostkeeper (vocals, guitar) and Sarah Houle (drums, vocals).
Shane & Sarah spent their adolescence isolated by Northern Alberta's geography, listening to folk and blues records, slowly developing an admiration for individuals that had the ability to convey rich stories through song. When they later expanded their musical horizons beyond these roots, they found another world in the self-aware discordance of Pavement and the raw appeal of The Make Up. Here, they developed their own storytelling language with which Shane could voice the traditional songwriting he grew up with and Sarah could provide skewed drum patterns as a backdrop. The addition of Jay Crocker (guitar, vocals) and Scott Munro (bass, vocals), fleshed out the skeletons of Shane's songs into the extraordinary marriage of noisy blues and pop sensibility that became the band Ghostkeeper.
While traditional influences remain at the very core of Shane's songwriting, a healthy irreverence towards standard song structure and an idiosyncratic storytelling voice results in something undeniably Ghostkeeper. (2010)Liner Notes
Recorded by Jay Crocker and Scott Munro
Shane Ghostkeeper (guitar, vocals)
Sarah Houle (drums synth, vocals)
Ryan Bourne (multiple instruments)
Eric Hamelin (drums) -
An early dark horse candidate for album of the year.
I HEART MUSIC 4.5/5 Stars
METRO NEWS
Like Leadbelly turned Metis trickster.
GLOBE AND MAIL
Promises to stand out amongst a busy field of new releases in 2010.
EXCLAIM!
Just an amazing record.
SEE MAGAZINE 5/5
Invites and defies comparison.
EYE WEEKLY
Back porch freak roots?
CHARTATTACK
An understated lo-fi song collection that is at times loose, raw and off-the-cuff.
OTTAWA EXPRESS