By: Will Pinfold
Crumbling Ghost | facebook | bandcamp |
It’s been a couple of years since the excellent Crumbling Ghost II, but although the format here (mini album or maxi EP?) may suggest a somewhat tentative return, the music is anything but hesitant. It’s a testament to the interpretive skill of Crumbling Ghost that the archaic spookiness of the tune best remembered as ‘Scarborough Fair’ (here played as ‘Are You Going To Leave Me?’) should survive their boisterous fuzz-rock treatment far better than it did the mellow folksiness of Simon and Garfunkel. Indeed, most of the (five, obviously) songs are imbued with the same atmosphere of the witch-haunted Britain of Matthew Hopkins, seen through the distorted fish-eye lens of hazy, late 60s doomy-pastoral psychedelia.
Occasionally the band use atmospheric devices, such as birdsong in the moment of tense calm at the heart of ‘Omie Wise’, but effective though they are, these kind of theatrics aren’t really necessary; the tunes themselves convey the spirit of those gone but, on serious reflection, not really lamented times, while the band’s superbly realised, dynamic arrangements maximise the drama inherent in the lyrics of murder and magic.
The alternately flickering/reverby and fuzzy/feedback guitars of ‘Lose and Get Something Good’ add an unearthly overtone to the song’s ambiguous, sinister lyric and, like much of Crumbling Ghost’s work, it’s both warmly embracing and unsettling in its confidential, knowing tone. It’s not all Olde England though; the band rounds off the album and expels its cobwebs with a blast through Davy Graham’s exotic ‘Maajun (A Taste of Tangier)’, somewhat in the vein of Goliath’s proggy 1970 version only with more squalling guitar excess in place of the flute.
Unlike the majority of folk rock (not to mention folk metal), where the folk element is essentially stylistic (traditional instruments, dressing like the village idiot), Crumbling Ghost feel close to the genuine British folk tradition and, as with any traditional group worth its salt, the band relies on the vocalist to bring the narratives of the songs to life. And in Katie Harnett they have a most able singer. Light-toned, expressive and sometimes imperious, she has the ability to tell a story without losing sight of its musicality, somewhat in the tradition of the great Jinx Dawson of Coven, but without her studiedly feline creepiness. Great tunes, superb performances and eerie frissons aplenty; seems like the break did them good.
