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Ghostkeeper
Ghostkeeper
*****
Like much of today’s music, Ghostkeeper exists in the tiniest of niches with a sound as unmistakable as Arcade Fire or Major Lazer.
Most popular indie bands seem obsessed with alchemy leading them into invisibility, whispering down some hallway, afraid of the presence of rhythm. Ghostkeeper is a pretty solid cure for this cross-legged shyness. Singing a little like the gummy-mouthed Ween, Shane Ghostkeeper seems born to throw wretched blues, stoner pow-wow and even a bit of inside-out Prairie funk bass into one tightly packed chamber. It sounds like raw bismuth looks, exploding metal in colourful, precise diagonals. You could even call it folk-metal at times. Collectively, the band shows an understanding of texture all these geeks in glasses seem to be missing.
And yet it’s the softness of Ghostkeeper, the cuddly acoustic guitar, the Make Up-like vocal twirls and just the very presence of Sarah Houle as occasional lead, that gives the band such an interior range, like a diorama filling an entire bedroom. And even more important, it’s about the pounding and ancient repetition, which should garner Ghostkeeper a cultural grant anytime he asks. Because with it he’s very subtly strutting out something older than Europeans alive in Alberta, without all that pat, “sacred to my people” bullshit, as he shrugs at the fact he has to chainsaw down trees to make money.
Just an amazing record, more accessible than the last, sacrificing nothing.

Headband
Music
****
If we’re going to do a Calgary band, better do one from here (even if they’ve retired.) Actually, it’s pretty hilarious Headband would put out such a solid piece of rock and roll and subsequently cease to exist as a unit. Close cousins to QotSA, Priestess and so forth, it’s all about the altitude, swooping down low from above, kicking up into the stratospheric mist then, whoa, all of a sudden the pilot’s standing right behind you, yell-whispering in your ear with three notes in one word, the drone still vibrating down.
Ian Martin did a great job bringing these songs to a polished maturity, and the slowly burning oil of “Fish Garden” plays sweet off more rabid bangers like “Little Shit.” Gourley, Bobby, Jason and Hammer are all talented motherfuckers alive on the scene, so there’s nothing to mourn.

OLD SCHOOL
Van Morrison
Astral Weeks [1968]
*****
Honestly, I’ve always hated fartface Morrison. The man had his aches, but to be such a bitch for so many decades . . . and who doesn’t fucking hate “Brown Eyed Girl,” most of all the singer himself. But lately I’ve come to appreciate the cadence of ol’ VM, plus his willingness to sound like he’s gagging on his own tongue. His lyrics are mysterious — is “Cyprus Avenue” about a pedophile as Lester Bangs insisted? Doesn’t matter, the tension’s there. So are sharp lyrics: “I’m nothing but a stranger in this world.” The band is amazing in a way that’s lost to modern folk; orchestral without mainstage cock-wagging, waiting for the tiresome standing-O. The subtlety, it’s everything here.