japan - "ghosts" (from the tin drum lp, available for purchase here.)

in brief : and from a haunted house to the torment of one's inner demons ...

john cale's "graveldrive" sounds like a haunted house, haunted by the traces of a loved one, too infrequently home. the track is indeed spare, but total silence has been utterly exorcised, as if the narrator couldn't bear a house gone quiet, as if he needed the persistent hum of the refrigerator (or the treated guitar).

david sylvian, on the other hand, utilizes silence as the foundation of his track, filling the corners of the day that one usually occupies w/ routine (work, bar, sleep, &c.). his croon grows more spectral as the track goes on, the marimbas rattle like skeletons. trapped in the closet? no, but stuck at home--too much rain; i can relate--and the hour has grown later than he'd thought. sylvian arrives slowly at the realization that, unlike cale, it's not, as he once thought, the house that's haunted.

i've not much more to say about "ghosts." it is, however, ideal music to listen to if you're driving down a dark backroad w/ scant evidence of civilization, on a rainy, cold, autumn night, and your windshield wipers aren't working as well as you'd hope. w/ a little luck, i'll be posting sweater-weather songs shortly, songs w/ jangle and three-part harmony--but this isn't the autumn i love just yet.