Musee Mecanique - Hold this Ghost

  by Benjamin Howarth

published: 3 / 3 / 2010

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I’m sure it was only two months ago that I was putting the finishing touches on my albums of the year poll for 2009, but it seems that every reviewer has already started pitching their choices for the next poll. I’ve already read the words ‘album of the year contender’ at least four times this month. In album of the year stakes, its always important to ask: which year? Had we happened to go back in time a decade, I think we’d be looking at an ‘album of the year’ contender with ‘Hold This Ghost’. This album is lushly melancholic, with whispered Neil Young-style vocals, and a cinematic scope. In sound, it closely resembles Grandaddy, but it has the texture of Mercury Rev - not bad, considering that it has clearly relied on a much smaller recording budget than either of those fine bands. Its also unrelentingly catchy - and will sit nicely in any record collection that boasts ‘Deserter’s Songs’ or ‘The Sophtware Slump’. But, fickle as the music industry tends to be, I sadly suspect it will linger in a comfortable state of semi-obscurity, loved only by a fraction of the audience it really deserves. So, let's stop talking about whether it’ll get any attention, and start giving it some. First things first, who are Musee Mecanique? Well, like seemingly every new indie band from America, they reside in Portland, Oregon. They named their band after a museum of slot and gaming machines, found in San Francisco. The prominence of this museum on Google suggests that it might be a nice day out for any SF-based readers, but has made it rather harder to find out much about the band it inspired. Like a lot of American bands, Musee Mecanique appear to be able to get away with having some very uncool influences simply by seeming slightly mysterious - the dark heart of lots of very-untrendy 70's synth based prog rock beats in the background of almost every track here. Uncool influences, as any long term Pennyblackmusic readers might already know, are quite acceptable to this reviewer, provided that they come with good tunes. And ‘Hold This Ghost’ has lots. The album’s distinguishing trait is the use of an eclectic range of instruments - organs, violins, accordions, xylophones and - on the wonderful closing track, 'Our Changing Skins', the musical saw. Each song has a lush, wistful ambience - but the medlodies, delicate and subtle as they are, are never pushed too far into the background. In short, then, this is a lovely album - shimmering, dense and pretty. Its about as rock and roll as an English Heritage annual membership, and offers the same feeling that you could have been doing this any time during the past 50 years. It is a comforting thought, then, that this album was actually recorded several years ago, having been released first in the States - it shouldn't be too long until we get to hear what they have for us next.

Track Listing:-

1 Like Home
2 Two Friends Like Us
3 The Propellors
4 The Things That I Know
5 Fits And Starts
6 Somehow Bound
7 Under Glass
8 Sleeping In Our Clothes
9 Nothing Glorious
10 Our Changing Skins

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