13ghosts Face the Music

Paying Tribute Through The Strangest Colored Lights

originally published April 9, 2008

In 2005, 13ghosts released Cicada, a beautifully flawed record that netted the band favorable press nationwide. Yet barely a year after the album’s release, the band received a cease-and-desist letter from the Bob Marley Estate. According to the Estate, songwriter Brad Armstrong’s cover of Marley’s “Three Little Birds” demonstrated willful copyright infringement due to the inclusion of original lyrics. Though a contrite Armstrong sought permission to continue selling Cicada, his request was denied, leaving 13ghosts without a saleable album.

“I think it’s hilarious that the Marley Estate troubled itself with fucking us up,” Armstrong says. “The party line on it was that we added lyrics to his tune, which compromises the integrity of his original vision. So they shut us down, and there was nothing we could do about it.”

Disenchanting experiences notwithstanding, a year later Armstrong and 13ghosts finally have reason to smile. Not only is Cicada available on iTunes sans the offending track, but the band also recently released The Strangest Colored Lights (TSCL), its most cohesive and perhaps most listenable record to date. The release and early success of TSCL marks the end of a long, strange journey for the Birmingham group. According to Armstrong, TSCL is the band’s attempt to address a tragic moment in its history: the 1998 suicide of one of its founding members.

Thomas Rhodes was the cousin of songwriter Buzz Russell, and along with Russell and Armstrong, formed the first incarnation of 13ghosts. In 1999, shortly after Rhodes’ suicide, Armstrong and Russell recorded an album of songs mourning the loss of their friend and bandmate. However, Armstrong deemed the songs “depressing, intensely personal and almost completely unlistenable,” and the record ultimately was shelved.

It would not be the last time Armstrong and Russell would tackle this deeply personal subject matter in their songs. In fact, the theme of death has regularly appeared in the band’s releases.

“[Rhodes’ death] has been something we’ve been trying to work through for the last decade,” says Armstrong. “I don’t know why we couldn’t move forward before now. The subject matter of the suicide would not be abandoned. I think, though, that everything in life, and thus everything in art, boils down to loss. I don’t think we’ll ever outgrow that. I don’t think anyone ever does.”

Armstrong characterized the sessions that became TSCL as another attempt to record the album about Rhodes’ suicide that 13ghosts previously had shelved in 1999. Now that almost 10 years have passed since their friend and bandmate took his own life, Armstrong feels that he and Russell finally have enough critical distance from the event to write about it suitably.

Indeed, TSCL is a crowning achievement and a true tribute to their fallen friend. Like a beacon in a blackened world, the songs - themselves strange yet inviting colored lights - burn bright against the fog that too often envelops the modern musical landscape. TSCL is a unique record, spanning a diverse cross-section of genres (electronica, country-sludge, psychedelic, spaghetti-western, hard-edged pop and dark acoustic) while remaining focused and driven throughout. The result is an album cinematic in its scope, full of dust and steel, depicting a gritty world straight out of a Cormac McCarthy novel, while somehow remaining listenable and even hopeful.

TSCL was recorded and mixed by 13ghosts and mastered by Doug Van Sloun (Bright Eyes, Magnolia Electric Co.). Sloun’s unobtrusive style, and commitment to purity, nicely complemented the album’s earthy feel. Besides maintaining the raw edge present on previous 13ghost releases, TSCL adds something that since 2002 has been absent: a consistent lineup of musicians. That continuity across songs helps TSCL stand together as a single work of art.

“We had, like, five drummers on Cicada,” says Armstrong. “I think having a solid lineup added some cohesion that we hadn’t yet found on Cicada. We still approach every song the same way we always have, which is to come at it headlong, with no idea whatsoever how it ought to live. That part hasn’t changed. We have no road map to the actual work. It’s all trial and error.”

With TSCL, Armstrong and Russell finally have quieted the chorus of ghosts (13 of them, in fact) that have rested like monkeys on their backs for a decade. 13ghosts’ final elegy to Rhodes is a study in musicianship and lyrical finesse worthy of inclusion in anyone’s record collection. Proof positive that despite what the Marley Estate may say, everything truly is going to be all right.

John Seay

WHO: Paul McHugh, 13ghosts, Sleepy Horses
WHERE: Caledonia Lounge
WHEN: Thursday, April 10
HOW MUCH: $6 (21+), $7(18+)