Ghost Reveries (Special Edition)

The News Review:

- Ghost Reveries (Special Edition)
- Prisoner Swipes Country Music Star’s Tour Bus; Woman Dies When…
- The Quieter Side of Brian Borcherdt

Ghost Reveries (Special Edition)
Pitchforkmedia.com – Jan 2, 2007
The first found the band in heavy mode; the second was a set of deathless ’70s rock. Blending those two strands excellently the band’s eighth album 2005′s Ghost Reveries– now reissued in a deluxe edition with bonus tracks a surround sound mix and a documentary– sealed the deal. A carefully crafted set of melodic progressive death-tinged metal the record made peth’s past releases feel like tiny sketchbooks for the present. In Beyond Ghost Reveries the documentary included with this reissue Åkerfeldt says that after years of honing and experimentation he once feared he’d become a “pussy” who could no longer manage his “evil” growls. Naturally he was thrilled to discover that when needed he could still conjure that exquisite blackness. And in fact even when shifting from folksy hymns to distorted mayhem the overall feeling of the music remains dark with a few flickering streaks of light… All those keys sometimes create a slight distance but then the guitars hit the same rhythm as a jazz organ and shape-shift on a dime: The band lulls then explodes. Unlike a number of other tech wizards embraced by the metal community peth make the most of their skills playing complexly and expressively. The music is poppier and more sumptuously recorded than Katatonia or Agalloch but maintains an edge banging to Amon Düül II. At times you may even be reminded of Japanese psych folk-rockers Ghost. pener “Ghost of Perdition” starts with gentle guitar lasting all of four seconds before Åkerfeldt begins his hemlock snarl. ‘” A creepy organ death-dances in the background facing off a pastoral moment lined with angelic traditional folksy harmonies before an aching solo guitar steps aside for more of the brutal stuff.

Prisoner Swipes Country Music Star’s Tour Bus; Woman Dies When…
Free with registration – America's Intelligence Wire – AccessMyLibrary.com – Jan 2, 2007
(From CNN News) Byline: Nancy Grace NANCY GRACE HST: Tonight a luxury tour bus that normally carries country music star Crystal Gayle is hijacked and turned getaway car for a fugitive prison escapee. He’s called a “little Houdini” who has police on the run in six states after stealing the luxury tour bus and an 18-wheeler Wal-Mart van topping it off with a pit stop at the NASCAR Speedway. Who is this guy? And he has still got the pedal to the metal tonight. Also tonight Crystal Gayle is with us live. But the big question is Where is he? Also tonight: Murder in the sky at 13000 feet. A beautiful young skydiver plunges to her death when her parachute and emergency chute both malfunction. Now police suspect a love triangle within the parachute club as motive for murder in the sky… Also tonight Crystal Gayle is with us live. But the big question is Where is he? Also tonight: Murder in the sky at 13000 feet. A beautiful young skydiver plunges to her death when her parachute and emergency chute both malfunction. Now police suspect a love triangle within the parachute club as motive for murder in the sky. And tonight we want justice for a college student a guy chasing the all-American dream his life cut short in a hail of bullets. (BEGIN VIDE CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was supposed to be just another jump for three members of a Belgian sky-diving club one they had done countless times before. But this time something went terribly wrong.

The Quieter Side of Brian Borcherdt
PopMatters – Jan 2, 2007
The sparse arrangements and repetitive melodies leave ample room for Borcherdt’s vocals which oscillating between the yearning upper registers of Neil Young and the earthbound wistfulness of Jeff Tweedy account at least to some extent for the music’s pervasive haunting qualities. There’s also the music’s unusually focussed intensity. Borcherdt’s oevrue—an EP called Moth released in 1999 to commemorate the death of a friend and two LPs both titled The Remains of Brian Borcherdt—seems to arise all from a single place. Borcherdt has a few notes a few snatches of melody that he keeps coming back to over the course of these albums—but these seem to be rather than the self-plagarism of the unimaginative instead a deliberate stringency that evokes the narrow resonant rooms of introspection. This is true even when there is a fair bit of variety in the song’s actual arrangements as on the first Remains LP where heavy rock trades off with cheesy drum machine-based electropop and sparse voice-and-acoustic interludes. Borcherdt’s thin quavery voice even manages a nice bit of screaming on “New Mexico”. But even on these heavier songs the music is consistently carried by the subtleties of Borcherdt’s vocals which even with metal crashing down around them act as the one clear strain that draws the listener into the song and holds her there.