Plumbiferous Media

Cana­dian indie band The Acorn released its newest full-length No Ghost to its Cana­dian audi­ence ear­lier this sum­mer. Releas­ing in the com­ing month state­side, No Ghost, the third album since the band’s for­ma­tion in 2003, reflects The Acorn’s years of time spent devel­op­ing a deep and inter­est­ing sound, but also its rel­a­tive inex­pe­ri­ence record­ing albums. While it con­tains a num­ber of very strong tracks, it lacks the cohe­sion the tracks really deserve, and suf­fers as a result.

Front­man Rolf Klausener sings No Ghost with a clear, sim­ple tone that is part folk and part rock, with the expres­sion of the for­mer and the energy of the lat­ter. As a gen­eral rule, Klausener does a good job set­ting the tone of The Acorn’s music. How­ever, while that music is usu­ally inter­est­ing, Klausener him­self occa­sion­ally falls into repet­i­tive pat­terns which detract from the strength of his vocals. For­tu­nately, this is fairly rare, and when Klausener is singing well (which is the case for the major­ity of No Ghost), the emo­tion and depth in his voice greatly ben­e­fit the music.

The lyrics of No Ghost are well fit to its indie-folk sound - images of nature, love, and regret abound. The Acorn switches between plain, though well-worded, lyrics such as “Bob­cat Goldwraith“‘s “You could leave / Leave me home / On the road / That we started on / Where I found out / All I needed was you” and more abstract but cre­ative lines like “Slip­pery When Wet“‘s “And oh I curse the weight of me / The heavy purse drug at your heels / And the dead straight line that pulled you in / Got tan­gled in our spi­ral spin.” Whichever approach the band chooses, lyrics are cer­tainly one of their strengths.

At its best, No Ghost has an incred­i­ble level of devel­op­ment, per­va­sive through nearly every ele­ment on the album: both gui­tar and drums, vocals, tone, and over­all track con­struc­tion. A per­fect exam­ple, “Cob­bled from Dust” begins with a unique, East­ern influ­enced gui­tar line, but vocals enter, and the track slowly builds to an expan­sive, flow­ing, entirely West­ern sound, all the while sound­ing absolutely excel­lent. The depth of sound con­tin­ues through a num­ber of tracks, includ­ing “Restora­tion” and “Crossed Wires,” the sec­ond of which main­tains what is eas­ily the most stun­ning tone of No Ghost’s tracks.

What doesn’t work nearly as well, then, is the over­all con­struc­tion of No Ghost. The album is diverse, but to far too high a degree. Take, for exam­ple, “No Ghost,” an inter­est­ing, active, entirely exper­i­men­tal track. Its suc­ces­sor is “Slip­pery when Wet,” inter­est­ing in its own right, but a meek, heav­ily country-influenced song com­pletely dis­con­nected from not only the pre­vi­ous track but pretty much every track up to that point. There are a num­ber of albums that suc­cess­fully give the lis­tener a tour of the vast reaches of sounds that the band can accom­plish, but that doesn’t seem to be what No Ghost is try­ing to accom­plish, and the level of vari­a­tion on the album is, as a result, more con­fus­ing than any­thing. It dis­tracts the lis­tener from the excel­lence of many of the tracks, leav­ing the album much worse off in the process.

No Ghost is gen­er­ally a good album, thanks to a com­bi­na­tion of solid vocals, well-written lyrics, and able instru­men­tals. It’s also cer­tainly a cre­ative album. Unfor­tu­nately, it’s not always as good as it could be. The best part of No Ghost is clus­tered at the front end of the album, with bits of inspi­ra­tion speck­led among the rest of the album - good in its own right, but not quite a match for the album’s height. But vary­ing qual­ity not with­stand­ing, No Ghost is solid, if not quite excellent.

This post is tagged 60-69, The Acorn