Damon and Naomi - With Ghost
(Subpop)
Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang's three previous collections of sad,
bedroom pop came nowhere matching their output with Galaxie 500. With
this release, the band has tossed their stripped-down approach, inviting
guest musicians to join the band in filling out their sound. Of course,
these are not just randomly found musicians for, as the title of the
album suggests, Damon and Naomi are With Ghost, i.e., the Japanese psych/folk
band Ghost.
The two standout songs are the two longest songs, both following the standard
slowcore formula, only elevating it with Ghost's great instrumentation and
Damon and Naomi's words and emotion. In both songs, the band works up the
emotional content of the song through Naomi's vocals as the song builds
and builds, leading up to a monumental release in beautiful, full instrumental
sections. In "The Great Wall," Naomi sings of an old friend who built an
emotional wall, capturing and holding what they shared together. As the song
builds to the climax, Naomi laments they were together so long, repeating "so
long soo long," as the guitars sound equally lamenting. "Tanka" starts
off very slowly with some simple acoustic guitar strumming with Naomi singing
a metaphor about two mirrors reflecting two different images, one dark,
one light, both misleading. Just as in "The Great Wall," the electric guitar
carries the downpour of emotion for the song after Naomi's vocals end,
sounding much like a 60s psychedelic guitar solo, backed by piano and
vigorously played acoustic guitar.
However, both of those tracks might be outdone by "The New World," the only
song on the album for which Ghost wrote the original music, the rest of the
songs being Damon and Naomi creations to which Ghost added "production and
arrangements" (as the liner notes state). The song starts off fairly plainly
with harpsichord being the lead instrument and Naomi's vocals forefront.
As the vocals end though, the song blends into a very pleasant instrumental
sequence using violins and keyboards. Many of the other songs on the album
are similar to the opening of this song, also somewhat plain and still
somewhat stripped-down. Several are still successful though, e.g., "Juddah
and the Maccabees" features Damon's lead singing with Naomi backing up,
their vocal harmony in the chorus carrying the song.
If Damon and Naomi recorded every album with Ghost, I would buy all of their
albums. I am definitely glad to have this one. However, on their own, they
just don't move me that much.
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