Simon Joyner – Ghosts

Fans of Simon Joyner’s outstanding (and criminally overlooked) Out Into the Snow would do well to check out its sprawling follow up, the recently released Ghosts. At 18 songs and about a 90 minute run time, Ghosts isn’t for Joyner-beginners or those with short attention spans. It’s for diehards. There are a handful of tracks scattered among the new record that might make convincing entry points for curious newcomers (“If I Left Tomorrow”, “Vertigo”, “Last Will and Testament”), but for the most part Joyner and his band play gloom/folk dirges with sharp stories and a surprisingly high noise quotient. Releasing records for almost 20 years now, Joyner’s not aging gracefully or making commercial concessions to his brand of outsider art. Ghosts is a dense, challenging piece of that weird America sound Joyner has been exploring since he started making records, and certainly worth the time needed to discover it’s many hidden treasures.