Damon & Naomi with Ghost cover

Damon & Naomi with Ghost

Released

It may have seemed an unlikely pairing at first blush, but Damon & Naomi’s acid-folk song writing is a perfect fit for the eloquent musicianship of Japanese psych outfit Ghost. If the first three Damon & Naomi albums were fragile things, the sound of a duo, newly adrift from their first group (Galaxie 500) and finding their footing, Damon & Naomi With Ghost is the fulcrum of the duo’s artistic development – their songs are blossoming here into profound vessels for intersubjective communication, with melody, lyric and structure folding together perfectly into origami forms. Ghost do what they do best, which is to elevate song to near-hallucinatory levels of profundity through sensitive, artful playing that knows when to play it poised, and when to let things loose. That they tend toward the former here tells us much about the way Damon & Naomi write songs, with consideration, but Ghost also understand the emotional twists and turns of beautiful melodies like “Judah & the Maccabees” and “Tanka.”

Jon Dale

Recommended by

Suggestions
Fallen Camellias cover

Fallen Camellias

Painting Petals on Planet Ghost
You Turn Me On cover

You Turn Me On

Beat Happening
Chappaquiddick Skyline cover

Chappaquiddick Skyline

Chappaquiddick Skyline
Parallelograms cover

Parallelograms

Linda Perhacs
Swaddling Songs cover

Swaddling Songs

Mellow Candle
A Sky Record cover

A Sky Record

Damon & Naomi, Michio Kurihara
More Sad Hits cover

More Sad Hits

Damon & Naomi
Livonia cover

Livonia

His Name Is Alive
2 cover

2

Carcáscara