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, mirroring the the spooky air of Women's Public Strain.
Much of that air comes from Gick, whose vocal cracks and squalls guide each track toward a particular emotion, boldly coloring the sonic elements swirling around him. The resulting hues are often bleak-- as he puts it, "I look at the world around me, take what I don't like about it, and use that in my songs." But that desolation produces not resignation or depression, but a kind of desperate, coursing energy. Much like a scary movie, TV Ghost's stressed-out tales don't get you down, they get your heart beating. And even if the pulse of Mass Dream is not as consistently maxed-out as that of Cold Fish, it's no less excited.
The example I keep coming back to is a cut buried deep into the LP, "The Degradation of Film". It opens with ominous chords that conjure a creaky organ echoing through an abandoned castle. Those chords threaten droney hypnosis, but the band pushes back against somnambulism, their guitars tracing dementia while Gick does his best Vincent-Price-on-helium shiver. Still, the chords persist, tugging at the band like quicksand. It's a tricky balance, one that TV Ghost could've easily steamrolled with speed and volume. But Mass Dream isn't that simple. Its power may sometimes be primal, but its effect is pretty complex.
