You & Me Ghost

Description

Product Description "It's got a fuzzed-out doo-wop feeling, and all the songs are about girls!" says Sleeping in the Aviary's Elliott Kozel. 'It's like Dion and the Belmonts with a hangover trying to figure out how to use a Big Muff pedal, or the Everly Brothers beating up some kid in the bathroom of a high-school gymnasium and then feeling bad about it later." He's describing the band's fourth full-length album, You and Me, Ghost, set for release by Science of Sound Records on September 6, 2011. In the ever-expanding musical universe that is Sleeping in the Aviary, asking what they're up to now will often reward the questioner with an unexpected response - and be accompanied by some great music, genre boundaries be damned. Originating as a trio based in Madison, Wis., Sleeping in the Aviary has evolved into a Minneapolis, Minn., quintet including Kozel (vocals, guitar), Phil Mahlstadt (bass), Michael Sienkowski (drums, backing vocals), Celeste Heule (accordion, keyboards, musical saw), and Kyle Sobczak (guitar). All the members have roots in southeastern Wisconsin, and have been playing music for a decade and more in a near-countless number of bands and one-off projects. Those varied experiences and experiments have resulted in the bouillabaisse of sounds offered in their discography - from the power chord-fueled pop-punk of Oh, This Old Thing? (2007), to the mostly acoustic indie-folk of Expensive Vomit in a Cheap Hotel (2008), to the soul-influenced pop of Great Vacation (2010). For You and Me, Ghost the band's sound takes on the influence of an earlier era but still sounds undeniably like Sleeping in the Aviary. "The 'golden oldies' from the '50s and '60s had a major conceptual influence on this particular album," says Kozel. "The simple romantic themes and short and straightforward song structures were elements we attempted to steal from it." And it wasn't difficult to focus on themes that dwell on affairs of the heart since the songwriting followed the end of a long-term relationship for Kozel, who says, 'It's the old tried and true 'break-up album.'' You and Me, Ghost was recorded in Science of Sound's studio over five days on a short break during several months of touring in the first half of 2011. For the most part, reversing the very layered and complex production style used for Great Vacation, here the band keeps the arrangements simple, limits superfluous or textural tracks and keeps the reverb to a minimum. Kozel and Sobczak produced the record (with assistance from all), aided by the engineering skills of Ricky Riemer. Review If you were to ask Elliott Kozel, throaty front man of the eccentric 5-piece Sleeping in the Aviary, what he thinks of his new album You and Me, Ghost, he'd probably respond cheekily "Best one yet!" He'd laugh since this is the way he introduces all of his albums, but I might have to agree. As much as I'm a sucker for their first two albums especially, by the time I was approached about reviewing this album I'd already gotten my mitts on an advanced copy, and iTunes informs me I'd already listened to it over 20 times through. A perpetual dark horse in the mainstream indie scene, SITA doesn't spend much time worrying about convention or genre, weaving from post-punk to raspy-folk to Hawaiian-garage and now to radical doo-wop. Resurrecting dated musical styles may not be a revolutionary concept, but in a sea of old-as-new competitors, Sleeping in the Aviary's approach is unique. They don't define themselves around an old-timey persona, but instead continue to evolve their style organically over time, never allowing their musical ilk to be resigned to a unilateral category. You and Me, Ghost is rife with shoo-be-do's and sha-la-la's, but make no mistake, this is not your grandmother's 50's record. Whether it's a tender ballad or a song so frantic the words are trapped stampeding out of Kozel's mouth, every song is still unmistakably Sleeping In The Aviary in style. Smart-alecky but playful, grainy but sweet, this release adds yet another layer of complexity to SITA's repertoire. --They Will Rock YouWhen an album starts out with a song as good as the new Sleeping in the Aviary LP You and Me, Ghost, does with "Talking out of Turn," you run the risk of a letdown over the course of the LP. While the band never reaches the twitchy-on-the-verge-of-breakdown torment of the album opener, the record is a cut open your vein opus that fully utilizes the group's wide spectrum of influences to make this anything but a normal "breakup album." Eschewing the normal mope of these types of records, You and Me, Ghost may be the groups most adventurous record yet, which is saying something for a band who have no qualms about changing sound from album to album. Ranging from the feverish anger of "Love Police" to the more serene title track, the band come across as a less boring Blitzen Trapper, casually employing genres ranging from punk to country to old time sounds to razor edged pop beaten out of acoustic guitars to format their sound. There are some tracks that employ vagueness in the subject matter, but a few, like "Ain't So Bad," with the line "What's she doing know, I don't knowâ ¦I stopped loving her years ago," visibly bear the scars of frontman Elliott Kozel. While some of the lyrics (including album closer "Pathetic Housewife Remembering Her First Martini) range towards heavier subject matter, the group do a good job a throwing enough curve balls throughout the album to not leave the listener wanting to jump in front of the next light rail. Some of the sounds the group toy with range from the jangly pop mixed with doo-wop of "Karen, You're an Angel" to the short burst of post-punk of "So Lonely," a song that has been a life firecracker for the band over the last year. You and Me, Ghost is a wily LP that doesn't really conform to any sort of description, which to me is one of the things that make the group so good. The LP is most definitely a "break up" album (they admit so in press releases), but it isn't an outright angry or overtly somber affair, more of a chance to blow off steam with some of your best friends. While their live show is where it is at to get the full Sleeping in the Aviary experience, You and Me, Ghost adds another wrinkle to their diverse and impressive catalog over the last few years and is another example of how many ideas you can really pack into one 12 song record. --RevilerJonah Bromwich may or may not have green hair and a jacket stabbed with safety pins. Punk is about attitude. More specifically, it's about an attitude that makes conservatives (political or otherwise) uncomfortable. Wisconsin band Sleeping in the Aviary have always understood that attitude thoroughly and on their new album, You and Me, Ghost they put it into practice in their most innovative fashion yet: combining their signature off-putting creepiness with hooky songs, most of which are about romance. Sleeping in the Aviary fans are used to cheerfully bizarre cynicism and discordant yet somehow catchy songs. So it's a bold step for the band to make an album that sounds so rooted in pleasant, everyday experiences. And yet, the band remains far from normal. That's why their seemingly typical love songs frequently end up with a couple of disturbing or off-putting elements; the love song parts force long-time fans to experience the band in a new way, the weird sounds to freak everyone else out. Take, "Are You Afraid of Being Poor?" on which a typical romantic build-up enters a sudden awkward phase when singer Elliot Kozel asks his potential soul-mate the title question. It's sincere and weird and the chorus of "sha la la's" in the background exaggerates that weirdness. Elsewhere, upbeat clangers play like drugged up outtakes from the first Fratellis album: opener "Talking out of Turn" is short, loud and explosive, while "On the Way Home," cheerfully turns dejection into an anthem. Kozel lists off the things he does on the way home after a girl rejects him. She tells him to "help himself to the loneliness," and he responds by drinking and driving, getting lost, and puking while ripping chords to soundtrack his descent. You can still hear the band's inclination for playing with odd sounds on songs like "Love Police," when occasional distortion in the background makes it sound as if there's a musically-inclined murderer taking care of business in the studio. While "So Lonely" is a paean to the solitude you can feel even in good company-one that uses a pulsing strobe sound that threatens to cause aural epilepsy. The most interesting song on the record is an interesting counterpoint to the 2010 ballad, "The Very Next Day I Died." One of the best songs of last year, "Died" used a tight structure to tell the story of a morbid life which managed to sound depressingly familiar and oddly epic. On You and Me, Ghost, the song "Karen, You're an Angel" tells a story that spans a similar amount of time but is insanely upbeat, recounting the long-lasting romance of a pair of high school sweethearts. It grapples with the same ideas that Ty Segall addressed on the stellar Goodbye Bread, namely, the comfort and banality of diving into the domesticity of grown-up life. The song is romantic and saccharine sweet, but the couple's stereotypical life (they have kids, a house in Boulder, they still do the same things they've always done) gives the listener pause. It's well-written, spare and creepily cheerful. When a band makes this kind of leap, fans frequently accuse them of changing for someone. Luckily, Sleeping in the Aviary are so far away from a scene that developments of this type come across as being entirely organic. And they've still got their warped sense of humor and their punk sensibilities. With You and Me, Ghost they've managed to channel their oddball aesthetic into relatively straightforward pop form. Attitude still comes first, but its seemingly prosaic nature makes the strangeness both more surprising and more insidious. And that's a good thing. --Passion of the Weiss