Hour's 'Ghost Bridge' Is an Astonishing Masterpiece of Basement Chamber Music
Cormier-O’Leary runs Dear Life Records and writes for the players he actually has. “This time around, I could write a proper record for exactly the instruments I knew were available,” he told Stereogum. What he wanted was simple and hard: “I would use the word color. … The way strings blend with wind instruments, it has this really rich effect.”
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Lucas Knapp recorded, mixed, mastered and produced all of it, and plays synth and pump organ besides. Most instruments went down at Stevie Studios, “which is a basement”; the baby grand in a living room; extra piano at Resurrection Church. Cormier-O’Leary: “basically all of the credit goes to Lucas Knapp, who recorded all of it and made it sound like it was not recorded in a basement.”
The Spatial Dynamics: The stated goal — “the instrument sounds pretty unadorned and exactly how the instrument sounds” — is why thirteen players never turn to mud. Woodwinds, strings and vibraphone over a rock rhythm section; no brass anywhere. A Closer Listen named the reason it feels intimate: “The answers are the arrangements and the brevity.” On the nearly ten-minute title track, solo piano accrues drums, then vibraphone, then everyone, “gathering like a crowd at a wake, forming layers of consolation … until the grief itself becomes a ghost.”
Standout Performance
Matt Fox, viola, on “Ghost Bridge” — the bandleader’s own pick. “We ran his viola through some reverb unit, but we really blew it out. The really haunting distorted wailing sound is Matt’s viola. … He doesn’t play the viola like anyone I’ve ever heard.” Heeyoon Won sings the record’s only vocal, on “Sky is Blue.”
Why It’s Certified
Nobody rehearsed. “Everyone was learning the music while we were recording, and that is less than ideal,” Cormier-O’Leary admits — then names the alchemy: “I think in the failure of reaching for that, we become the band that we are.” Paste calls him “among the most versatile craftsmen in DIY music right now,” and finds “no second of Ghost Bridge is anything but suspended in elegiac air.” Stereogum: “spellbinding,” and “elegant in a way you wouldn’t normally associate with basement recording sessions by artists rooted in the punk scene.” It closes with “Sonny,” written for his kid. The bridge holds.