Ghost In Light

-It's a mistake to pigeonhole Ghost in Light as merely an "ambient" outfit. Since reconfiguring itself as a trio, GiL has become quite comfortable (and more adept) at integrating doses of throttling post-rock and dynamic volume shifts with its quieter moments. In fact, in concert is where the band truly shines: Though each individual member is talented in his own right — Shae Moseley's ferocious, rock-steady drumming anchors Chandler Evans' intricate guitar work and Josh Evans' evocative, heartfelt vocals — Ghost in Light's music becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

-Ghost in Light After Fox Meadow For a certain kind of music geek, the concept of song-sequencing makes or breaks an album. The members of Ghost in Light certainly believe this to be true, if After Fox Meadow's seamless transitions between spaced-out reflection and brazen chord-bulldozing are any indication. Buzzing keyboards, harmonic latticework and spidery riffs abound — conjuring the yawning noisebursts of Explosions in the Sky, early Smashing Pumpkins and Hum's burnt-sugar sheen. Perhaps most important, there's no shortage of heart stitched into Meadow's proficient musicianship.

-Annie Zaleski
5/31/07
- Riverfront Times

Ghost in Light
www.myspace.com/ghostinlight; www.ghostinlight.com Ghost in Light can hang with the noiseniks at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center or buddy up to cool-kid indie-rockers at Off Broadway — making it one of the few bands in town who don't have a specific clique to call its own. But this social fluidity has everything to do with how impossible it is to categorize the quartet's tunes. Their full-length debut focused on dreamy, lo-fi slo-core — references include Sigur Rós, Hum and Red House Painters — but their new demo layers plenty of post-rock-anguished vocals and throttling guitars atop transcendent instrumental textures. (AZ)
10 p.m., Delmar Restaurant & Lounge

-originally published 9/6/06

- Riverfront Times

St. Louis' Ghost in Light do not play fast music, nor particularly loud music. The music they do play, though, is atmospheric, haunting and beautiful. The band performs its shows sitting down, which is not only appropriate for the mood of the music, but gives them easy access to the multitude of effects pedals that inform their sound. The band's debut CD, Dead Eyes And A Traveling Mind, was a slow burner that revealed impressive songwriting skills and mastery of a hook, albeit often a very slow hook. The band features members of some of St. Louis' most loved rock, post-punk, and punk bands, including Pave the Rocket, Fragile Porcelain Mice, Glory for Champions, and Railers of Kiev. GIL's new demos show the band picking up the tempo and volume, as evidenced in the new song, "Faces", available as an mp3 below. The new CD, which will also serve as bait for potential labels, promises to be even better than their debut.
by Jeff York
http://nowherenothin.blogspot.com - Dividing By Zero Will Get You Nowhere

Ghost in Light (9 p.m. Wednesday, September 7, at the Hi-Pointe. Call 314-781-4716 for more information.)

The deal: An indie quartet that crafts soothing, mid-tempo tunes for overcast fall days and rainy afternoons spent curled up on the couch. Driven by vocalist Jason House's delicate-as-lace crooning, Ghost in Light's woozy guitars conjure the floating, eerie calm of outer space or march along like ants on a mission on the full-length Dead Eyes and a Traveling Mind; a stripped-back Idaho or a less-rustic Red House Painters are atmospheric touchstones.

Worth checking out? Definitely. Rare is the band that can make slowcore tunes not function like a dose of Tylenol PM -- and sustain emotional gravitas all the while.

By: Annie Zaleski
Originally published on Wednesday, September 7 2005. - Riverfront Times

Any Band that list Afghan Whigs, Joy Division, Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine, and The Cure as influences has to be brilliant, have excellent taste and is probably a good marker that i will love them or loathe them for putting such great bands next to their name. Well, I love them. Hailing from the great River City, Saint Louis, MO, this 4 piece melds lush vocals and layered landscapes with a hint of aggression, that you may think sometimes invokes the soul of Sigur Ros.

-Jasin
www.yourstandardlife.com
1-5-2007 - Your Standard Life

Ghost in Light's take on post-rock is highly atmospheric, employing an army of effects pedals and displaying a mastery of dynamics, and often veers into slow-core, nearly ambient, passages. The band's sound evokes everything from Sigur Ros to Explosions in the Sky to Jeff Buckley to Hum. This EP is the first of two EPs the band plans on releasing in 2007 and features more upbeat tempos and louder guitars than the band's debut album, Dead Eyes and a Traveling Mind.

In a word, the new EP is Great. The EP starts out strong with the driving "Faces" and manages to get better with each and every song, culminating in with the best three songs as the last three on the CD. For as good as the CD is, I really wanted the band to extend out some of the instrumental passages, such as the end of the slow-building, Sigur Ros-esque "Demonolith". Other songs blend together to form what other song-suite-favoring bands such as Explosions in the Sky might mash into one song; "Hypoxia2" serves as the perfect prelude to "Jovian Chorus". The muted trumpet of "Walls of Jericho" paints the perfect picture of ducking off a busy city street into a cold and dark alley and following the music in the distance. The song steadily builds into a swirl of pounding drums, hypnotic guitars and lushly swirling vocals.

-Jeff
www.nowherenothin.blogspot.com
1-17-2007 - Dividing By Zero Will Get You Nowhere

....The subsequent two years that Ghost in Light has spent playing together as a quartet only start to explain the musical evolution found on its new EP, After Fox Meadow. Like the debut CD, Dead Eyes and a Traveling Mind, the disc was recorded with Will Jones. But Moseley says the band tracked the "meat and potatoes" of the new tunes at SmithLee studios in Maplewood — unlike Mind, which they recorded in a home studio — and this time around, the process was very much a collaborative effort. While there are plenty of atmospheric, lost-in-space tunes in the vein of Mind (think quieter Smashing Pumpkins crossed with Hum's skyscraping chords), the opening track "Faces" is indicative of some new-found force: It's a strident sucker-punch of a song featuring multi-layered harmonies, distressed guitar squiggles and a propulsive beat that stomps forward like a rumbling marching band — yet one that still drifts off now and then into some dreamy interludes.....

....Yet despite these changes, the band continues to excel at creating evocative, dynamic music that says a lot without necessarily depending on verbal cues for guidance. The best comparison is perhaps that the music on Meadow is a series of snapshots that captures vivid emotions. The twinkling percussion and ebb-and-flow chords on "Demonolith" is the desolate soundtrack to driving aimlessly on pitch-black freeways at night; "The Snow Is Soaking My Shoes" is just as its title implies, a melancholy trudge with wintry chords that causes chills; and Andy Colligan's muted trumpet on "Walls of Jericho" aches with romantic longing and anguish.

by: Annie Zaleski
1-17/07

- Riverfront Times

Due to a few wrong turns on the way to the next club, I expected I'd only see about twenty minutes of Ghost in Light's set. Fortunately for me it was the kind of night where it was okay for the band to run late. As befit a Thursday night at the Way Out Club, the show was loose, even sloppy; the sound system was clearly less committed to the show than the crowd; and glaring mistakes were made by both guitarists. But despite all that, it only took one song to realize that an even more profound change than I expected has happened to these guys. Take away one member (singer Jason House) and suddenly the impact of every remaining part is doubled. Shae Moseley's drums were huge and authoritative, the inventiveness of Elshua Evans's bass playing wasn't obscured by ambient noise and Chandler Evans's genius guitar arrangments found the perfect spots in between and around them. (And who knew the guy could sing?) It was like watching the Life and Times cover TV on the Radio: stately, cerebral, and aggressive all at once. Grade: A

-Mike Cracchiolo
4/30/07
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/stlog/ - Riverfront Times Blog

Saturday Night Date | Thomas Crone
10/14/2006

It's funny, really, the way the good folks at Lucas School House act like they're the first to introduce this concept called a nightclub, but we'll forgive that as enthusiasm for their creation of a nice, needed, somewhat-upscale music venue on the edge of Soulard.

Early bookings suggested that the room would primarily feature jam bands, but the place has certainly opened up that approach in recent weeks.

No better example of that can be found than tonight's early show, a rather appealing double bill of local and national talent.

In the opening slot is Ghost in Light, an area band that's been drawing consistently strong word-of-mouth reviews recently, with a rock sound that's simultaneously muscular and flexible.
Fans of local rock history may well remember Jason House, once the frontman of the late, great Pave the Rocket, but Ghost is certainly a group in which all members are equally praised. The 3-year-old band seems ready to move into a more prominent role with the release soon of the EP "Dead Eyes and a Traveling Mind."

Headlining tonight is Asobi Seksu, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based group that's been drawing a significant amount of airplay on alternative radio locally. The band also has a legion of Web admirers based on members' heavily traveled Myspace page, which is loaded with several cuts and a bit of video from their second and latest album, "Citrus." That record is a wonderful blend of American and English pop-rock styles from the past 15 years, with vocals sung in both Japanese and English.

If the musical term "shoegazer" means anything to you, then this is a group that's not to be missed.


- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Versatile enough to open for ethereal poppers Asobi Seksu and emo forefather Jeremy Enigk, this local quartet glides between dreamy slow-core and pounding post-rock.

-Annie Zaleski - Spin Magazine