Spirit Ghost: Dead Tropical is alive and kicking
by Jody Jenkins
There’s good humored sarcasm aplenty in the persona of the guys who make up the band Spirit Ghost, a kind of up-the-ante wisecracking going on all over the place that hints at some unadulterated fun just ahead. You get a whiff of it from the poster art and the albums, but it’s on full display live.
Take their genre for instance: “Dead Tropical.” While warming up for their gig for Live At The Grid, they were anything but. Tropical, yes, with the beach riffs and and the crystal clean surround sound that comes through even in the edit. But they were horsing around and generally turning it into a laugh fest, joking with each other and the crew, hamming it up while pulling off some pretty nice riffs and a tight sound. Very alive and kicking.
Alex Whitelaw, the band’s founder and leader, said the self-styled genre is an east coast counter point to west coast surf music. “I feel in New England we’re on a coast that’s too cold to go near 80% of the year,” he said. “(I) thought that was interesting to play with as an idea and an influence. It’s always dead. Our beach towns die and so does their business for a good part of the year.” Luckily Spirit Ghost keeps the flame alive the rest of the time.
The driving boingo b-movie sounds and Devo-esque elements conjure a surf party extraordinaire …(but) despite the upbeat, the music is tinged with an almost innocent melancholy that at times slides right off into the deeply personal.
The band is indelibly associated with Calico Blue because of their surf roots and the fact that they’re friends and tour together. And both bands hail from Amherst. But while they share a common vibe, the two do very different things: Calico is etherial and dreamscape. Spirt Ghost is more playful and rooted in traditional beats and riffs, but their songs have a wider range, from the sometimes zaney like Cult King, to weighty stories grounded in reality like Satan’s Hands, about struggling to find the middle ground between what two people want and need. One is slam-danceable and the other an unfurling groove that conjures rolling highways. The sometimes full-charging boingo b-movie and Devo-esque flourishes conjure a surf party extraordinaire with rock-garage-indie elements and a bit of rockabilly thrown in there too with songs like Don’t You Ever.
More than anything Alex’s vocals define the overall sound with a high pleading that borders on falsetto. He honed his craft over the years, first working and recording alone before venturing out into the world to form the band Sexy Girls, which then evolved into Spirit Ghost. He’s the sole songwriter, main vocalist and rhythm guitarist and the music seems to embody his personality: Good humored and quirky but ultimately driven and serious.
Oftentimes, despite the upbeat, the music is often tinged with an almost innocent melancholy that at times slides right off into the deeply personal. My favorite and their opener for Live At The Grid, Undone, is a perfectly paced portrait of a relationship falling apart. The slow, steady measures of the beat hold the song together like a sedative while the lyrics reveal the raw reality of the refrain: “Waiting for your plans to come undone. Turn down the lights and come undone.”
Alex said that while it’s about a break up, it’s about not settling as well and having faith in yourself: “Know that your aspirations and goals have merit, because people change, or end up not being who you thought they were, and you’ll watch all your time together come undone,” he said. The theme also bleeds over into his feelings about his band and his music. “The song serves as a reminder that I’ve known what I’ve wanted out of music for a long time,” he said, adding “And it’s me telling myself don’t get distracted by scenes, or what other people want my music to be.”
The music, like their poster art, evokes nostalgia that’s slightly askew and ultimately really just a cover for something much more contemporary in its depth and delivery. It harkens back to seemingly simpler times, or at least the yearning for simpler times, but hints at life’s more complex reality than pure nostalgia and false innocence allows.
Jody Jenkins is the Director of Field Programming for Amherst Media and the editor of The Collective.
