“In the Dirt”
from the album Ghost
2009
iTunes
On their debut album, Ghost, San Diego’s Tape Deck Mountain (the trio originally released everything on cassette tapes) sound like they’re striving for sonic immortality. Many of the seven proper songs (not counting two interludes) sound like tributes to heaven: soaring music that could be the background for a ritual sacrifice. “Ghost Colony” mixes the sludge rock of Kyuss with the bombastic guitar solos of Explosions in the Sky (though not the latter’s song length), while “80/20” is all glorious creepiness, hearkening back to Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie, albeit with hollower vocals. Guitarist/vocalist Travis Trevisan has the messianic vocal style down perfectly — think Thom Yorke, Jason Pierce, et al. — as each line sounds more beckoning incantation than mere utterance. Cryptically funny lyrics, though, keep the album from falling under the weight of its own ambition, as on “In the Dirt,” when Trevisan sings, “Please don’t marry that asshole Larry, I know he’ll move the place you’re buried — next to me, in the dirt.” Elsewhere, “Scantrons” discuss those annoying fill-in-the-bubble multiple choice tests from high school over a slow, galloping beat. Bizarrely beautiful.