Ghostwood

 “There’s a great beauty in darkness.” 

This line seems to have stayed with me. Caught between the pages of an old edition of Mojo written five years ago in the wake of Johnny Cash’s death. I am yet to hear a more accurate way to describe Cash, let alone what constitutes great music. 

Maybe then, this is what first drew me to Ghostwood’s sound. The hidden edge behind what seems to me a brightly packaged exterior. I don’t think it was until I saw the band live that I fully understood the gravity of this. 

There was a raw energy that filled the room in King’s Cross. Pent up emotion that only seemed to increase with the soaring guitars and Gabriel’s powerful vocals. Ghostwood’s set solidified what I had thought when speaking to Gabriel previously - this was a band beyond their years.

Since they first began to play music, Ghostwood has continued to evolve. Looking back at their first EP, released through Modular in 2007 Gabriel admits, "We released an EP a little while ago when we were a lot younger. We’ve grown up quite a lot since then and realized things."

"To be honest, I’ve never really told anybody this, but when we recorded it we wanted the EP to sound like the new one now, but we were so young, like seventeen or eighteen, that we didn’t have the confidence to be outspoken.”

 When recording the EP, Ghostwood worked with guitarist Jim Mogonie of Midnight Oil fame.

“I play a Fender Jaguar, which was kind of the seminal surf rock guitar. The Beach Boy’s all used Jags, so that was the sound we were talking to Jim about. It’s funny because he’s now in a surf rock band called the Break… so we connected quite well.” 

Perhaps it was this sound that made way for some critics to reference the band as psychedelic. In saying this, Ghostwood cannot be so simply placed. This is apparent when the guitar is coupled with reverb and at times, haunting lyrics. 

“Projection is really difficult, getting that idea out. When you’re trying to write music or songs people will push you in different directions because they think they understand it. I don’t really think that we are psychedelic. I don’t think the bands we look up to as sort of forefather’s like Radiohead and My Bloody Valentine – they’ve got a broad spectrum of sound,but they’re not psychedelic bands.”

For fear of placing things in boxes myself, it is bands like these that share not a sound, but an indescribable underlying element with Ghostwood. That great beauty in darkness.

 
In a similar way, when it comes to songwriting Gabriel talks of how Ghostwood look up to older bands for inspiration in terms of their approach, not their sound.

"It’s like that age old thing when you at older bands that you look up to and what they did, you don’t want to copy them but imitate their methods. There’s a lot to learn in observation.

I was reading how the Beatles used to record and they’d write each other’s parts. They would all write each part together as a team. I think that’s a good lesson to learn from such a good band. I like looking at how they approach the problem, or the creative process.”

 I can’t say that any of the bands I have interviewed concede that songwriting is a natural process, nor static. The same applies for Ghostwood, “I think patience and the enjoyment comes naturally, from an early age I was really content just sitting in my room playing music. I don’t think writing songs comes so naturally but If you love it so much.”

Tuesday the band will kick of their Stargazer Tour along the East Coast and in the near future release a 2011 EP. When we spoke about the band’s recent successes, it seemed to come back to one thing.

“You’re the luckiest person on earth If you can do what you love doing and bring home the bread doing it.”

Comments

[pj rock]

the sentiment of feelings seem to ignite the content that heart is better to follow than darkness is better to light...moving experience to hear such beauty,