ZapTown

Monster Movie
Everyone Is A Ghost
Graveface
Rating: 3 out of 5

Link:
Monster Movie: http://www.myspace.com/monstermovie
Graveface: http://www.graveface.com/

Have you ever stopped, looked around, and thought “is this really the world I live in? Is this what it’s supposed to look like and be like because in my mind, I have a completely different picture.”

This is the metaphysical concept that Christian Savill and Sean Hewson ponder with the dew-laced lonely pop of Everyone Is A Ghost.

“Outside of the strip mall, I feel confused. It’s enough,” they sing as “Bored Beyond Oblivion” intros the album with a fuzzed-out and noisy shoegaze gem. I want to define this album with this song. However, that would be delusional as Everyone Is A Ghost primarily sounds less than this highlighted opener.

“Have you noticed, all the people around here are always sad and lonely…are we living in a ghost town” brings us back to that alienated feeling that dominates this album. The acoustic folk-space pop gives us something so familiar but vaguely out of touch which only accentuats the creepiness of their words.

If a name sounds familiar, it’s because you have at least one Slowdive release tucked in your collection somewhere. And if you expect the greatness of a band like Slowdive to leach over into Monster Movie, you might be disappointed. But if you look at this album to contain the talent of a musician who had the opportunity to be in Slowdive, then you will look at this album for what it is, its own entity.

And even though something like “A Place In The Mountains” sounds like a really bad Alice In Chains B-side, and the mega-synthesized sound of “Fall” blends Erasure aesthetics with what sounds like a homage to the film Ladyhawke, there is “Down, Down, Down” and “Silver Knife” that I don’t think I could live without now that I heard these songs.

A little less desired than their potential, Everyone Is A Ghost could have been much, much better.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.4MB)