GHOSTS

Strawbs

Prog Folk

4.02 | 227 ratings

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SouthSideoftheSky
Special Collaborator
Symphonic Team

Do you believe in Ghosts?

Ghosts follows in the footsteps of Hero And Heroin, building on that album as a blueprint. As on Hero And Heroine we find here the same well balanced mix of folky elements, progressive elements and more straightforward rock elements. However, on closer inspection you can detect a tendency towards emphasising the straight-ahead rock elements and toning down the progressive elements. Indeed, only the two multipart suits, the title-track and The Life Auction, are truly progressive. And while there were a couple of more straightforward rock songs on Hero And Heroine as well, they were so well integrated into that album as a whole. This is not as well achieved on Ghosts. The two longer tracks just mentioned are also the only ones that are really up to par with the Hero And Heroine material.

Just like Hero And Heroin, Ghosts begins with a multipart song of around eight minutes in length and continues with a number of shorter songs. The songs do not flow into each other as they did on Hero And Heroine and which was one of the things that made that album so great.

Also, despite the colours of the cover art for the two albums, Ghosts is a bit less dark compared to Hero And Heroine. The material is melodic and sometimes even light-hearted here. The lyrics and vocals are still romantic and haunting, though. The beautiful Grace Darling is especially moving. There is an interesting story behind that song too, about a woman living in a lighthouse and saved a number of people from drowning after a shipwreck.

While Hero And Heroine is a masterpiece, Ghosts is only very good but still an excellent companion to that album.

SouthSideoftheSky | 4/5 | 2008-7-19

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