Bristol
songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nick Talbot’s fourth album for
Warp is a gorgeously hallucinatory affair, marking a slight shift
towards late-80s/early-90s psychedelia. The Ghost … occasionally
conjures up the Stone Roses’s gentler moments, the hymnal sections of
Spacemen 3′s Playing With Fire and the Church’s hazy masterpiece, Priest
= Aura. And yet, for all the melancholy beauty, there’s an atmosphere
of quiet disturbance which makes it chime eerily with our times. The
sense of creeping unease is typified by The Foundry, which begins with a
plangent electronic intro like something off the Eno-led Roxy Music
debut, but veers into an essay on the everyday origins of evil,
crystallized in the malevolent main character. These are terrific,
understated songs with a church-like serenity, but hooks that reel you
in, too: the endlessly repeated guitar motif on Circadian; the way the
sublime The Prize gathers momentum towards a frazzled climax. It adds up
to a beautifully haunting set, and the sense that Talbot is surely
among music’s best-kept secrets.
Gravenhurst – The Ghost In Daylight (2012)
Bristol
songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nick Talbot’s fourth album for
Warp is a gorgeously hallucinatory affair, marking a slight shift
towards late-80s/early-90s psychedelia. The Ghost … occasionally
conjures up the Stone Roses’s gentler moments, the hymnal sections of
Spacemen 3′s Playing With Fire and the Church’s hazy masterpiece, Priest
= Aura. And yet, for all the melancholy beauty, there’s an atmosphere
of quiet disturbance which makes it chime eerily with our times. The
sense of creeping unease is typified by The Foundry, which begins with a
plangent electronic intro like something off the Eno-led Roxy Music
debut, but veers into an essay on the everyday origins of evil,
crystallized in the malevolent main character. These are terrific,
understated songs with a church-like serenity, but hooks that reel you
in, too: the endlessly repeated guitar motif on Circadian; the way the
sublime The Prize gathers momentum towards a frazzled climax. It adds up
to a beautifully haunting set, and the sense that Talbot is surely
among music’s best-kept secrets.
