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EP, mini-album, call this what you like but within the five songs, spread over twenty five minutes, there are enough styles and moods to constitute the twenty five year back catalogue of many a sonic troubadour. Whereas some of the lyrics may read like the outpourings of a lost and helpless soul, the music frequently transcends such blackened moods. Veering from skull-cracking doom-riffs to haunting folk textures to Glam Rock exuberance with little warning this is music that doesn’t need to make excuses, untethered by the restrictions of rhyme or reason, kicking sand in the face of conventional song structure and for that we love it. Essentially Pet Ghost Project is a solo venture but you have to wonder whether the name is hinting that extraneous voices are at play inside the mind behind it all. Is he in fact suffering from a particularly rare and creative strain of multiple personality disorder, a sort of artistic Sybil channelling his energies into making some of the most unique and eclectic rock music since the halcyon days of Magoo? Download ‘I am Nothing New’ and the sprawling ‘This Life in a Bottle Rocket’ alone and you’ll hear the voices of everyone from Dead Meadow to Slint, Ziggy Stardust to Synanthesia, Plaid to The Decemberists. On second thoughts, spoil yourselves and buy the whole album.
RICHARD STOKOE
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