Ghostland, a portfolio of threnodies and faintly macabre love songs presented
by Jeff Kelly (Green Pajamas) and Laura Weller (Capping Day and a recent Green
Pajamas inductee), at first appears to fit with the current spate of folk-rock
revival offerings. For all its familiar trappings, however, Goblin Market has
little in common with the British Isles folk traditions that inform such
notable heirs as P.G. Six or the Iditarod. Kelly and Weller draw much of their
inspiration from Victorian literature and art, particularly the era’s poetic
preoccupation with love and death. While these twin threads are common to most
folk traditions, the Victorian sensibilities of repressed desire and
religiously transfigured carnality put a unique spin on Ghostland’s songs--a
mix of both period and original texts--and distance them from the folkloric
pagan/Celtic canon of ancient Britain.
Kelly and Weller harmonize like turtledoves as the flute-twined waltz
of “Autumn Leaves” unfolds. Kelly reflects upon of the natural passage of
time, but the spooked bassline that slithers between strummed guitar and
brushed drums breathes superstition into his words. Live, “Autumn Leaves”
reportedly leads into an extended psychedelic solo. Shorn of its excesses, the
song serves as a signpost to Ghostland’s haunted realm of languishing lovers,
cemetery sonnets, and pre-Raphaelite romance, where Death always hovers at
hand. Weller sets the mortal pining and self-fulfilling funereal rites of
Elizabeth Siddal’s “At Last” amid minor-key chords, heartthrob bass, death-rattle rhythm, and haunted harmonies. Her delivery is riveting, equal to the
spectral power of the dearly departed Sandy Denny or of Trees vocalist Celia
Humphris. Alas, creeping keyboard embellishments seem out of place here, as
does Kelly’s curiously halting attempt at a Barry Clarke-style (Trees again)
electric-guitar expression of lovelorn anguish. Clunky synth soloing also
mars “Ditra Flame,” a gripping graveside paean already on shaky ground due to
Weller’s lapse into indie-rock vocal banality. “No Grace,” her note-perfect
original hymn, proves this to be a rare and forgivable misstep. Those chiming
synth tones still grate when they intrude, though they’re innocuous enough, for
the most part, and genuinely pretty in the instrumental “Song for Christina.”
This would be the same Christina--Victorian poet Christina Rossetti--who
penned "A Nightmare." A fragment of the latter provided the project with its
name and the album with its title and its strangest moment--a darkly
cacophonous interlude certain to prickle your neck hairs.
Kelly’s songwriting dominates on the album’s second half, with highlights in
his jaunty, Tom Rapp-styled setting of an Emily Brönte excerpt (“O Mother”),
the piano-and-flute fineness of “When I Am Dead,” and especially the
fantastic “Highgate,” a tribute to the famous London cemetery. The latter is
classic Kelly, its moody and melodically superb meshing of acoustic and
electric textures standing with his strongest Green Pajamas and solo work. The
intimate love letter of “My Elizabeth,” familiar from its prior appearance on
Kelly’s Private Electrical Storm LP, is just as choice--if not quite as
sweeping and enormous. After a musical reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s “El
Dorado,” its dreamer’s fruitless search sweetened with Spanish-style guitar
work and canyon-call harmonies, Ghostland offers another Kelly/Brönte
adaptation, this one a beautiful, harmony-laced serenade to “The Night-Wind.”
The wind’s seductive song promises its unwilling betrothed love even beyond
death, cueing the resignation of the closing “But a Dream.” Weller and Kelly
pile on the harmonies with renewed urgency as the succession of the seasons
twists childhood’s refrain of “merrily, merrily, merrily / life is but a dream”
into a bittersweet mantra of maturity, reminding of the steady trickle of sand
through Time’s finite hourglass.
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