TV Ghost’s third full-length for In The Red, Disconnect is a journey to the center of dreams. The Lafayette, Indiana, band displays a newfound maturity, incorporating churning rhythms and psychedelic drone into a lush torrent of gaseous keys, sprawling guitars and eerie melody. Think Porcupine-era Echo and the Bunnymen and Tago Mago-era Can run through a Cure Pornography blender.
“TV Ghost’s 2009 debut LP, Cold Fish, is a maelstrom—10 hectic songs ripped out in 25 minutes. Stuffed to the seams with wiry guitars, trembling keyboards, crashing beats, and Tim Gick’s mad-man warble, it has the creepy tension of a post-punk haunted house where the Cramps, the Scientists, or Pere Ubu might leap out from the shadows at any moment. The band deftly balances precision and abandon—every moment sounds lunatic and unhinged, yet no track collapses into complete anarchy. “That abandon has subsided a bit on Mass Dream, which doubles the length of its predecessor despite having only one more track. That’s by design—Gick says that his intent was to “space things out more, let the songs breathe.” And while I miss Cold Fish’s farther-flung moments, the band has countered that loss with songs that are deeper and more open. Now, along with all the post-punk echoes rattling around, unexpected reference points pop up. At times I hear the enervated drama of Echo & the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch, or the stridency of Ian Svenonius during his Nation of Ulysses days. And TV Ghost prove as adept at stark dread as they are at fevered bedlam....” —Pitchfork.
“TV Ghost’s 2009 debut LP, Cold Fish, is a maelstrom—10 hectic songs ripped out in 25 minutes. Stuffed to the seams with wiry guitars, trembling keyboards, crashing beats, and Tim Gick’s mad-man warble, it has the creepy tension of a post-punk haunted house where the Cramps, the Scientists, or Pere Ubu might leap out from the shadows at any moment. The band deftly balances precision and abandon—every moment sounds lunatic and unhinged, yet no track collapses into complete anarchy. “That abandon has subsided a bit on Mass Dream, which doubles the length of its predecessor despite having only one more track. That’s by design—Gick says that his intent was to “space things out more, let the songs breathe.” And while I miss Cold Fish’s farther-flung moments, the band has countered that loss with songs that are deeper and more open. Now, along with all the post-punk echoes rattling around, unexpected reference points pop up. At times I hear the enervated drama of Echo & the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch, or the stridency of Ian Svenonius during his Nation of Ulysses days. And TV Ghost prove as adept at stark dread as they are at fevered bedlam....” —Pitchfork.
TRACK LISTING
1. Five Colors Blind
2. Veils
3. Placid Deep
4. Stranger
5. Dread Park
6. Elevator
7. A Maze Of Death
8. Cloud Blue Moments
9. Others Will Be Born
10. Siren