Ghostplane: Beneath the Sleepy Lagoon

Herald rating: * * * *


Like their close capital-city cousins the Phoenix Foundation, Ghostplane have a rare ability - they don't just deliver a bunch of songs, they create their own sound world.

And they do so without breaking into a sweat. There's something neatly effortless about Ghostplane's approach.

Sure, their guitars can surge big and noisy when the mood takes them, as it does on Southern Hill and when they're doing elegant country-surf'n'tremolo things elsewhere. But most of this is art-rock - with alt-country trappings - that does imaginative things with its many spaces rather than filling them with decibels.

That makes most of Beneath the Sleepy Lagoon both gentle and unsettling, a hushed after-dark kind of album.

All that melancholy mood comes with some lovely songs. Among the most graceful are the hushed hymnal Wash of Gold and Guided by Lights.

Others can cause grasping for reference points - In Blue Light could be the Blue Nile roughed up a bit and dragged out of the 80s; Lazy Bones reminds of Don McGlashan in reflective mode, the final Half a Glass comes from the Go-Betweens' folk-rock template; the twitchy High Sierra can sound like a long-lost Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood duet.

But as with the earlier Panther Valley Country Club EP, Beneath the Sleepy Lagoon makes Ghostplane's world more intriguing with each visit. A haunting we will go.

Label: Arch Hill