Cool Ghouls - A Swirling Fire Burning through the Rye

  by Adrian Janes

published: 18 / 1 / 2015

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Review

Cool Ghouls are a San Franciscan band, and their music is suffused with the kind of sound that made the city and its state famous in the Sixties. Full of passionate harmonies, slightly rough-hewn playing and spacious with reverb, at its best it might have come down to us as one of the Albums of 1966. ‘And It Grows’ is a confident, catchy opener which sounds at once box-fresh and like a long-lost classic. Instrumentally it evokes the fuzzed-up pop of the Electric Prunes with Country Joe and the Fish organ flourishes, while vocally the harmonies are a match for the likes of Jefferson Airplane and the Mamas and the Papas. But it’s at once surpassed by ‘The Mile’. Apparently an impressionistic portrait of a San Francisco district, it’s founded on a dark guitar riff overlaid by shimmering tremolo, driven along by Alex Fleshman’s drums. Even though much of the Ghouls’ sound has its roots in the ‘60s, their view of the city comes from today, where remnants of the hippie dream struggle to co-exist with Google commuters. So there’s a degree of distress in Pat McDonald’s verses, even as the chorus is as ecstatically inviting as anything in Scott McKenzie’s day and as beautifully sung as anything by Fleet Foxes. The band’s three-part harmonies are one point of comparison with the Beatles. With guitarist Ryan Wong’s ‘What A Dream I Had’, there is also the realisation of three talented composers (fellow guitarist McDonald and bassist/organist Pat Thomas, who between them contribute all of the other songs). Slow and tom-tom heavy, with a see-sawing fuzz guitar, it’s vocally like a little-known outtake from the ‘Ticket To Ride’ session at which the Byrds also dropped by. Although confidently establishing a sound from the start, as the album progresses the band show they aren’t afraid to vary and extend it. ’Orange Light’ is illuminated by a vaguely Indian melody, the air of period experimentation enhanced by touches of backward guitar, and once again there’s a thumping, memorable chorus. ‘Insight’ features prominent bass from Thomas (who consistently provides fluid yet dependable lines) and brass, culminating in a guitar and sax freak-out. Oddly, there is a coda which bears no discernible relation in mood to what goes before, and which seems a rare misjudgement. Presumably with the vinyl version in mind, after Side A ends in ‘Insight’, Side B commences with ‘Get A Feelin’’. Like the album’s final track, the Creedence Clearwater Revival-style rock and roll of ‘Sweet Rain’, its best aspect is some heartfelt harmony singing while the song overall is not that special. In between are three tracks which have much more impact. ‘Across the River’ is up-tempo pop-rock, bisected by a searing fuzz guitar solo. ‘Reelin’ is a lament that looks with regretful envy at the Ghouls’ predecessors in the tradition and the city to which they’re committed: “They were born with the seed and flowers/We’re on fallow ground.” Most outstanding of them all, and one of the album’s key tracks, ’New Moon’ generates tension from its jangling guitars and ominous drum thud, at odds with the naive melody of the verses. The song acts as a counterweight to the downcast sentiment of ‘Reelin’, building towards an extended twin guitar work-out which shares the emotional intensity, if not the dexterity, of ‘Marquee Moon’. Like ‘Reelin’, there is a sense of the history that has brought the Ghouls and their generation to where they are today. The slow ascent of the guitars over the almost militaristic drums suggests a clear-eyed view of the continuing struggle, but it still culminates in a hopeful chant:”It’s a new moon!” ‘A Swirling Fire Burning through the Rye’ is an almost perfect merger of mid-60s pop and rock styles, recapturing a time when bands as varied as Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds and the Doors constantly experimented but with a sensibility (and a sufficiently receptive public) that meant they could make the charts as well. Somehow the Cool Ghouls, on the majority of this album, pull off the trick of sounding both steeped in that era and sounding great in ours. This is their second album, and as is the American way, it’s also called their sophomore effort. It certainly shows they are adept students; the crucial question is what they will have to tell us next.

Track Listing:-

1 And It Grows
2 The Mile
3 What a Dream I Had
4 Orange Light
5 Insight
6 Get a Feelin'
7 Across the River
8 Reelin'
9 New Moon
10 Sweet Rain

Band Links:-

https://twitter.com/coolghouls
https://www.facebook.com/coolghouls

Label Links:-

http://emptycellarrecords.bandcamp.com
https://vimeo.com/emptycellarrecords
https://instagram.com/emptycellarrecor
https://twitter.com/emptycellar
https://www.facebook.com/emptycellar
http://www.emptycellarrecords.com/