Dreamy post-punk rockers Crooked Ghost have revealed their new video for ‘Roadkill’, which appears on their new album ‘Skeleton House’. The album from the Asheville, North Carolina-based collective will be released on limited edition 12″ vinyl on February 15.
It sounds like going on a blind date with Buffalo Bill, speeding down a long Vegas highway, while listening to Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’. The accompanying video was created by Devan Burger, shot at the band’s practice space and along the Blue Ridge parkway in the freezing cold. In paranoid b-film style, this is a creepy ode to going on dates with serial killers, fast cars, being a teenage runaway, dead animals and secret desires.
“There’s a nervous and sexually frustrated energy to this song. Dark and paranoid, but longing for something… I really love the duality of this song. The almost-disco drums to the howling punk breakdown at the end, it really is one of our best songs,” says Crooked Ghost frontman Ray Clark.
“Roadkill is dangerous and a bit risque. It’s about lust and wanderlust; a wayward runaway on a date with a serial killer. This is one of my favorite songs from the record because it has a deep, dark ferocity to it that I’m really attracted to. I love the urgency of it, and how it goes wild at the end. Besides, this video was a lot of fun to make.”
This new single follows up the first single to be released from the album, ‘Sleepwalker’. Their debut LP ‘Strange Burial Rituals’, released in March 2017. This new offering has two distinct halves: the first is lighter, the second darker. The whole thing plays out like a story, or rather, two opposite stories that are intertwined.
Formed in 2013 by Ray Clark, Crooked Ghost was initially a channel for leftover songs that didn’t seem to fit in any of the other bands Clark was involved in, but quickly became the focal point of Ray’s creative energy. Today Crooked Ghost is Ray Clark, Chris Saldin, Jon Wyatt, Charles Reed and Alex Cannon.
The heavily emotive and dreamily lush ‘Skeleton House’ is the band’s sophomore LP – a dark and hazy dreamscape of lush and angular melody, with a stark lyrical rawness touching upon such subjects as addiction, trauma, loss, superstition, and everything that gets left behind after a catastrophic event. The album consists of eight tracks, ranging from dreamy and playful to anguished and harrowing. Billowing vocal patterns weave intricate stories between shimmering guitar crescendos, cascading synths and mathematical percussion.
With the power-pop punch of Catch Fire, the dark-disco punk breakdown of Roadkill, to the angular yet dreamy swoon of Sleepwalker, Skeleton House will impress and even haunt you.
“These songs were inspired by the loss of someone I loved to a fire. The idea that something like a fire could destroy so much, but still leave something behind was so inticing to me. I wanted these songs to represent resilience and strength, and to be able to process loss in a healthy way. I wanted to find a way to bring light to the darker things I was experiencing, and to arrange the pieces into something beautiful,” says Ray Clark.
“We recorded this album up in Black Mountain, NC in the dead of winter. The snowy and icy landscape definitely added to the album’s atmosphere. This is also our first release on vinyl, making it very special for all of us. As kaleidoscopic as it sounds, I feel we very much achieved the piece of art we were wanting to make.”
‘Skeleton House’ is now out on CD and the vinyl edition can be ordered via Bandcamp. It is also available digitally across music stores and streaming platforms such as iTunes and Spotify.
TRACK LIST
1. Body In Stars 02:42
2. Sleepwalker 04:04
3. Only Nightmares 03:45
4. Catch Fire 05:26
5. Witch Heart 02:45
6. Black Cat 05:56
7. Roadkill 04:07
8. Skeleton House 06:18
CREDITS
Lyrics by Ray Clark
Music written and performed by Crooked Ghost
Recorded and engineered by Edward Maddill at El Rancho Morbido
Produced by Edward Maddill and Crooked Ghost
Vinyl mastered by Adam Boose at Cauliflower Audio
Pressed via Palomino Records
CD and MP3 versions mastered by Ray Clark
Album photos taken by Alex Cannon
Ray Clark: guitar/vocals
Charles Reed: guitars
Chris Saldin: bass
Alex Cannon: keyboards
‘Sleepwalker’ video directed by Rome Widenhouse
‘Roadkill’ video directed by Devan Burger
Photography by Rome Widenhouse
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