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Have you ever heard a short clip of a song from a new band a knew immediately you were going to buy the album and love every second of it? Isn’t that a great feeling? See for me, that’s as good as it gets. It’s my crack and iTunes is my dealer. Honestly, shit this good can’t be legal.
The most surprising thing about Abigail’s Ghost is that they hail from New Orleans, or Naworlins as my family local to the area calls it. It’s one thing to come across a jazz or blues artist/group from New Orleans, but a progressive rock band? A really good one? Now that’s just a statistical anomaly. I gather Berklee is involved somehow too since they have a link to the school’s website and the album was mixed in Boston. The next most surprising thing, they recorded Selling Insincerity (2007) in just a week. This is a really solid recording with a nearly immaculate mixing job. Maybe they just didn’t sleep that week, either way, it’s pretty impressive in my opinion.
I actually found these guys when purchasing the rest of Riverside’s discography. They were listed as a suggestion, but all of you prog-rock fans will immediately compare this band to Porcupine Tree. I’ll tell you, it’s not a bad thing. I hear it too. But it’s not Porcupine Tree and you won’t mistake the two bands after giving this album a full listen. Comparing them to Porcupine Tree is like comparing some progressive metal band with a good singer to Tool.
I don’t even know where to begin in describing the music itself. Every instrument sticks out to me. Maybe the drummer is a good place to start, he nearly slipped that 7/4 time signature by me unnoticed in Close. It’s just an awkward time signature and takes skill to pass it off smoothly. He knows when to keep the beat simple, when to toss in small spontaneous fills, when build up the right amount of tension into the upcoming transition… he’s even got the right mix of cymbals and drums. What I mean is that drums provide pitches across a large majority of the EQ spectrum. It’s a balancing act to fill the low, mid, and high end. If you want a recording that really has some punch to it and sounds amazing really loud, the band as a whole has to master this concept, as does the drummer. The drummer should accomplish this most of the time, unless the the mood calls for something else. The other instruments each have their own slice of the spectrum to hit. But no one really has the high end except the drummer and maybe some flashy 80’s metal guitarist shredding the whole time, and no one covers the whole spectrum at once except the drummer. You might not guess it unless you’re really into recording or take music pretty seriously, but drums can really make or break a recording giving a really full sound.
Progressive rock bands almost ubiquitously have keyboard player. They may not have a very strong stage presence (well they can’t really move very much), but they’re extremely important in filling the spectrum between those EQ slices the guitar, bass, and vocals occupy. The keyboardist in Abigail’s Ghost does a phenomenal job of doing just that. He might even be doing more, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s really hard to distinguish a keyboard from a guitar loaded with fancy effects. It took me a long while to figure out some of Dream Theater’s solos where actually the keyboardist. I’m pretty sure the solos in this band are the guitarist. Regardless, the keyboardist is deceptively subtle and does exactly what he should be doing and more.
I could really go on with this whole EQ spectrum theme and analyze the remaining instruments, but I think I’ve gotten the idea across. They all play their part. Beyond that, the bass player does what every bass player should do, but few actually do… bridge the gap between melody and rhythm, lay low when need be, make the guitars sound thick as possible at the right times, and offer some counter melodies when appropriate. I’ve been a bass player for a long time and I’m definitely very critical of bass players. I’m not lying when I say Abigail’s Ghost found a gem. It’s hard to come across a bass player of this caliber. Now the guitars, I’ll keep this part short and sweet. The guitars are good… great rhythm, great sound, great solos.
Remember when I said these guys gave me that feeling of knowing I’d love every second of the album before even making the purchase? Well, I’ve been writing this post all while listening to the album for the first time and I just finished listen number one. My suspicion was right on the money and I’m diving right into number two. If you’ve read this whole post, I can’t imagine you’re even considering not purchasing their debut album. How often do I really take the time to break an album down to this much detail? It happens about as rarely as a I find bands this good. If you like Porcupine Tree, Riverside, Dream Theater… buy this album and see how quickly Abigail’s Ghost floats to the top of your progressive rock recommendation list.
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