Album Review: Maybe Ghosts by Baby Ghosts

As Elf Power never said, "Context is king."*

After the Dissolution of Grantland (or The Day the Internet Died), I consoled myself by listening to downbeat French and Spanish-language bands. (My torpor could not be adequately expressed in English, apparently.)

Also, I had been listening to a podcast recommended by my brother-in-law called Song Exploder where bands break down one song layer by layer. And what surprised me is how the process of making many of these songs seemed so cold. Someone playing some beat on a drum machine, running it through some processor, listening to it on a loop for 5 hours, and then piecing it together with other samples and loops they have gathered from various musical charnel houses. All processed in white sterile laboratories while wearing white perfectly tailored labwaistcoats. 

One day, I happened to glance at my Spotify feed and saw that a friend of mine who has musical taste that I respect was listening to Baby Ghosts. Baby Ghosts! No one's afraid of a baby ghost! A baby ghost just mournfully cries and, if you have enough children, you always feel like you are hearing mournful crying from somewhere around the house. You can sleep through a baby ghost. You can't sleep through a toddler ghost that gets right in your face while you are sleeping and then whispers: "Daaaaaad! Daaaaaaad! I have to peeeeeee!" So, with all of this carefully thought through before listening, I was expecting something more twee.

Baby Ghosts is not twee. Not that there is anything wrong with twee (although usually there is).

The energy and passion just flow out of the album right off the bat and never let up. It's probably a little sloppy and a little off-key but because it's done with such energy and life, it doesn't matter. It makes me feel ten years younger, makes me want to get on a plane and go see them live, to go stand in a crowd of Provo hipsters and jump up and down while they all fold their arms and barely nod their heads and give me dirty looks. 

Here are my top four songs with the reason why expressed in the form of a question.

Which song would Baby Ghosts play to defeat Scott Pilgrim and Sex Bob-Omb in a Battle of the Bands? Oh, A Surprise! 

This song rules. It feels like it is going to explode or fall off the rails at any moment. In the chorus, the lead singer is at the top of her range but she is really going for it regardless of if she might not make it but she does make it and it only works because she went for it. Scott Pilgrim wouldn't have a chance.

Which song's lyrics do I want to see scrawled on Megan and Colette's bedposts when they are teenagers? MSRPRSNTTN

My mind is in here/what can your airbrush do with that? 

If they don't scrawl it on the bedposts, maybe we can put it up in vinyl lettering around the living room.

Which song do I want Megan and Colette to quote when they are sitting at the table and letting out their frustrations about being nice to guys? Ghost Boyfriend

I never wanted commitment/I just wanted to visit/but I can't be nice/lest you think I'm a ghost in love

Which song seems like something that two hipsters who are falling in love sing together in the car and when they sing it and stare into each other's eyes while singing realize that the lyrics are the opposite of what they want to have expressed? Oil/Sunshine

Don't go taking all my light, my life, my sunshine.

I freaking love this chorus. And this song encapsulates how the lead girl singer ranges from Sleater-Kinneyeque yelping to Fear of Menesque singing.

I like almost all of the other songs on the album. The only one I am on the fence about is Cookies. The words "cookie" and "treat" shouldn't be sung at all unless by a toddler ghost that is singing a creepy nursery rhyme that portends someone's death.

Ratings:

Would I see them in concert? Yes

Would I wear a shirt of theirs? If it featured the crying cat, yes

Would I kill for them? No

Would I play them if the Three Mels (Blanc, Brooks, and Torme) asked me my opinion on what was hot on the music scene? No, it would be too dangerous to disappoint the three Mels.

Would I play them if the Baldwin Brothers (Alec, Stephen, and Daniel) asked me what was hot on the music scene? In a tiny ghost's heartbeat.

Grade: A

*I think the words Elf Power never said were "invisible men have beat me black and blue" but that's my interpretation of their meaning.