The Ghost is Dancing

Venus Zine, June 21st, 2007

The Darkest Spark, the first full-length from the Toronto-based music collective/indie-pop outfit the Ghost is Dancing, is an audio road trip for the listener. The Ghost is Dancing draws you through Lake Ontario (singing “You won’t come to Toronto? / I’ll bring you here, I’ll bring you here”), over Niagara Falls, until you finally burst into Toronto, only to realize that they weren’t trying to simply bring you somewhere, but make you experience the act of getting there. The trip begins with anticipation in the earliest tracks, best expressed in the title track, then moves into emotional preparation in the energetic anthem “We’ll Make It” and the tracks that follow. Halfway through the album, in “Greaklakescape,” you finally start trudging through Ontario, and only reach the other side on the final track “Arrivals (are never enough).”

The Ghost is Dancing paves their path with some of the best orchestral-style pop to surface in years. Their sound cannot be described as “inventive,” but they come off as a melting pot of familiar indie-pop styles, a grand reinvention of something that has been heard before. Hovering at about seven members, and sometimes swelling to twelve, the Ghost is Dancing is a melting pot in and of itself.

Each member of the band provides their own layer, everything from accordion and recorder to the typical bass-drums-guitar instrumentation.

The most interesting thing about the Ghost is Dancing’s layered sound isn’t the variety of instruments that they use, but the way they use many layers of the same instruments. This element comes through the strongest on vocals. Permanent band members Jim DeLuca and Jamie Matechuk weave their cannon-like lines of melodic vocals together, sometimes adding guest-player Lesley Davies’ sweet warble to the mix. The result is a sing-along vocal quality, which luckily manages to be earnest instead of pretentious.

The best thing about The Darkest Spark is that the end feels like a new beginning. Now that the good people of the Ghost is Dancing have brought us across the lake, they have us right where they want us, and we just have to wait to see what they will do.