Album Review: Ghost Notes
Everest
Vapor Record
(2008)
***
Ghost Notes , the debut album from Everest, an up-and-coming Los Angeles band that is certain to — with the aid of catchy tunes like “Rebels in the Roses” and “Reloader” — gain loyal fans likely to follow the band from the Silverlake dive bars to the great musical beyond. Upon listening to the entire album, one maybe find it hard to believe that the band is barely shy of a year old. Yet, this comes as no surprise: its individual members have been producing their own music in the LA scene for quite some time. Prior to the group’s auspicious commingling, the members played with such bands as Great Northern, Earlimart, and John Vanderslice. Each member has offered his respective experience to this musical project, as highlighted by Russell Pollard’s vocals and the advanced instrumentation of fellow band mates: keyboardist and guitarists, J. Soda and Joel Graves; bassist Rob Douglas and drummer Derek Brown.
The track “Rebels In The Roses” is Everest at their best, which also explains why it is the song garnering the most press, featured on shows such as Conan O’Brien… yet another impressive feat for the alt-country rockers. Gorgeous and upbeat at one moment, sad and mellow the next, “Rebels In The Roses” is beautifully dynamic — a welcome addition to the softer side of indie-rock.
Nonetheless, the band is newly formed, and thus these LA songwriters still need to work out more than a few things. For example, merging its members’ considerable lyrical talent with their musical chutzpa. Oftentimes, the band’s ambient overtones, often illustrated in its love of the reverb knob during guitar riffs, unintentionally overshadows many a great poetic line. Nevertheless, in some blessed albeit rare occurances Everest manages to enhance the message behind the lyrics and subsequently elevate the songs’ meanings so that not just the words are metaphors, but the sound itself works on a metaphorical scale, too. “Reloader,” for instance, seems to reload itself instrumentally with each successive chorus, effectively building up the crescendo so that by the end you get thoroughly caught up in the rush of pure emotion.
While the epic name, Everest, may seem, if anything, a rather oxymoronic moniker for the band’s nuanced indie-meets-folk approach, the imagery of the album still manages to evokes a starry sky under which these songs could have very well been written and sung, huddling around the campfire in camaraderie.
For a freshman album, such a gentle and poignant effort will win over the hearts of many the Death Cab for Cutie lover. Yet some listeners, like myself, may yet yearn for more from this home-grown band. The band can go farther, reach greater peaks, if they tried. Everest’s first effort is a winsome prelude to a blossoming musical career, I just can’t wait to see the actual blossom.
