Tasseomancy (former Ghost Bees)

Ghost Bees
Ghost Bees, led by twins Romy and Sari Lightman, perform strange, spirited and often spooky folk music, inspired by their family ancestry. "Even as kids we always had this fascination with death and the supernatural," says Sari.

by Sean Flinn


left to right: Romy Lightman, Amber Phelps Bondaroff, Sari Lightman (click for larger version)
When Romy and Sari Lightman speak with one another, sitting side by side on a curved bench in a cafe booth or on a couch in their book-lined living room at home, they look each other and the person opposite directly in the eye. Steadily held eye contact can be unnerving.

Though the 23-year-old twin sisters may both stare intently---intensely---their individuality becomes apparent over a couple of lengthy conversations and through their music as Ghost Bees---the moniker they've used for two years or so. They've lived in Halifax for seven years---they grew up in Toronto---and are now about to release Tasseomancy, their first album (produced by Andy March, who plays on it as well, and put out on his Youth Club Records). It's comprised of six tracks (and a hidden seventh) of strange, spirited and often spooky, acoustic folk sometimes called freak folk.

"The original inspiration began when I sort of spent some time...how would you say it?" Romy asks her sister. "You were spending some time healing after, you know...," Sari prompts.

Romy finds the thread: "I had a close friend of mine that passed away," she says. "I was doing a lot of healing work and I was spending a lot of time with this one woman who kept saying to me, 'There's something about your ancestry, especially on the matrilineal side you should really look into.' She kept saying, 'It's a great-great-grandmother.' And I didn't really know what she was talking about."

The woman who revealed this to Romy was a "Celtic shaman," Nancy Sherwood, a healer who works on the South Shore. This was a few summers ago, Romy recounts, though the sisters still visit Sherwood and fellow practitioner, David Cameron. (They live and work near The Ovens and, among other things, hold sweats, Romy says.) The great-great-grandmother at the heart of the revelation---and appearing in an old family photo on the cover of Tasseomancy---is Clara Chernos, their maternal great-great-grandmother. Sari and Romy eventually learned about Clara from their own grandmother, Merle (mother of their mother, Ryla).

Clara lived in a Russian village near what was then the Latvian border and survived the pogroms---a term referring to anti-Semitic riots which states throughout history allowed to happen, but also an event, a tool of violent oppression that has come to be most strongly identified with 19th-century Russia, the era in which Clara lived. She lost her parents in the pogroms and married young.

"Before she moved to Canada she married a man twice her age that they used to call The Grandfather," Romy continues. They had several children. Eventually, "he moved here [to Canada] first and she stayed. The real kicker I guess was, simultaneously, he was beginning an affair with the landlady at the place he was living in Toronto. And also there was another pogrom in the village."

Clara gathered her children into hiding with the exception of a son, who was "forgotten," as the song says, in the haste to escape the house, a target for the coming mob. When she rushed back to the house, Clara found her boy in his cradle covered in glass. Already notified of her husband's adultery, the latest pogrom was the last straw for Clara. She moved the rest of the family to Canada.

On the title track, Clara's beautifully evoked with her "shtetl skin and rosewood eyes/an eighteen-year-old orphan bride." The story is underscored by a wonderful waltz-and-strings arrangement (mandolin, guitar, viola and violin) that calls up the mournful but still uplifting---melancholic---mood of Jewish music.

"Tasseomancy," the term for the practice of tealeaf reading, was a skill of Clara's and one she used to make income for her family, according to her great-great-granddaughters. She came to it, Romy says, "because at that time there was a lot of mysticism in Judaism in Russia."

There was more to Clara too. "She was a singer and maybe if things had gone differently for her...she would've led a far more creative life," Sari says.

Romy and Sari Lightman sang throughout their childhood. The former remembers a time when their great-grandfather, who lived until they were 11 or 12 years old, made the connection between past and present in the family---a connection the Ghost Bees are illuminating on their debut release. "I used to sing in the synagogue, the temple that we used to go to," Romy recalls, "and he actually came one night and he turned to my grandmother and said, 'She has the same voice as her...Clara, our great-great-grandmother."

Learning of a bond with a major forbearer and making music that explores and celebrates it with her sister Sari appears to have played a role in Romy's healing, though she's careful not to overstate it. "It was almost like this obligation---not that guilt-infused obligation---but just in the sense of...doing some healing work for our ancestors," she says. "It just kind of seems like something we're all a part of so we want the story to continue."

As Romy sounds like Clara, it's difficult to tell who's who on the record. While closely matched, there are audible differences. One has a more stage-musical, character-driven voice---a style you might hear on Broadway, something these musicians grew up with, apparently. Another seems more akin to the singer-songwriter. But then just when you think you're on the trail, you lose it. For example, on "Sinai," the song named after the Toronto hospital (Mount Sinai) where they were born (Romy, a few minutes before Sari) in 1985, both assume a stage-like chorus sound, belting out the refrain, "You came tumbling and I was sorry." Sari got stuck in birth and urgent measures had to be taken to birth her.

"We usually fight about it," Romy laughs about who takes what vocal part. If one comes up with the melody, the other works on the harmony, unless one or the other, or both, gets stuck. The pair's voices harmonize beautifully.

While Sari wrote the majority of the songs on Tasseomancy (except for the secret song), both Lightmans have full complements of songs that are part of the live set. Both sing and play guitar, while Sari also picks up the mandolin and banjo on the record and live. "We go through stages where all the songs in a set are Romy songs, and then there'll be times when they're all mine."

The fact that Sari writes a song such as the title track, which sprung originally from personal and individual pain Romy experienced, makes sense to these two. "Our lives are pretty interconnected," Romy says.

Earlier this year, Sari took a trip to Israel, where she met other young sojourners looking to understand ancestral roots. "People were talking about their names, what their names meant," she says. "In Judaism everyone's named after a dead relative or ancestor and the more and more we spoke about what our names meant and where they came from, it brought out the idea that we're carrying with us, whether we realize it or not, all this ancestry."

And it was a working vacation too. "I went to some really beautiful places, the Dead Sea: I spent some time by myself there. I just wanted to write and have some new ideas for some new songs." She hopes to start completing the songs over the next few months, as they go on tour, crossing Canada in April and May as a start.

At the same time, Sari saw the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians writ large. She was there on March 6 when eight rabbinical students were shot and killed in the library of their Jerusalem religious school.

"That was really hard for me because I was in the neighbourhood and my friends had studied at that yeshiva," she says.

She watched the intense mourning, followed right after by Israeli citizens returning to the streets en masse. "I was just...a traveller and I was able to be afraid when I found out there was a shooting. I felt really scared. My friends who were living there, they couldn't be scared because that's their life," Sari says.

When she visited the West Bank, she heard people condemn the shootings. It's also weighed heavy on her to learn in the news earlier in the week of this conversation that the death toll among Palestinians had just increased by another 200 or so.

While her sister bears the wariness of the recent traveller, Romy is more direct in her criticism of Israel---Zionism, not Judaism, they're both careful to point out.

"They're breeding their citizens to be child soldiers by the time they go to school," Romy says.

"But both sides are though," Sari counters.

This is the only time disagreement disrupts the easy flow of conversation.

Twins are evil. At the least they're strange and suspect. Or so they are in movies, from Kubrick's The Shining---with the creepy blonde-haired girls beckoning young Danny to "come play with us, Danny, forever and ever..."---to Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, in which Jeremy Irons plays twin brother-gynecological surgeons who basically lose it in lockstep (the scene where they revert to childhood and demand "orange pop" is particularly scary).

Movies, especially horror---from Bela Lugosi-billed classics through the original Lost Boys, The Exorcist and much in between and after---were part of Romy and Sari Lightman's upbringing, according to their father, Jon Lightman. The effect has seeped into their music, he says. "The haunting quality, the spooky quality, comes from growing up in this house because I'm a huge horror buff, a vintage film buff primarily, but they were introduced early to horror films, which they love, they crave," Lightman pere says on the phone from Toronto, where he's a teacher.

"Even as kids we always had this fascination with death and the supernatural," Sari says. "We had a club as kids where we told other kids that we could see ghosts and that spirits inhabited the dolls that lived in this plastic bag in our basement."

All this, the acceptance of death in history and horror, not to mention their appreciation and investigation of family ancestry, might suggest a maturity for their 23 years. Jon Lightman's heard the "old-soul" tag put to his daughters. "People have said that about them. I'm not sure I see it. But I am fascinated by the lyrics. That's the fascinating part, where all this stuff comes from.

"They have a huge range of ideas. On this first album there's everything from Vietnam to their birth story and fables---Sari wrote that one, um, "Erl King.""

That's pretty cool when your dad knows the names of your songs and can tell a reporter that one, "Erl King," is actually an adaptation of a poem by German writer Goethe, whose life straddled the 18th and 19th centuries. And the proclamation in that song, "Father! Father! I fear for my soul as you should," doesn't freak him out, just a teensy bit? No, he says. "They had a fascination with death from a very early age. We all make fun of it now. If they saw someone on TV, they always asked the question, 'Is that guy dead? Is he alive or is he dead?'"

Tasseomancy also includes "Goldfish and Metermaids," a song that draws on recent history in Vietnam, particularly the Vietnam War, from a trip they took there a few years ago, while studying in Thailand (through a program at Peterborough's Trent University). Another, "Tear Tassel Ogre Heart," visits Pol Pot's death-regime in Cambodia, not to revel in the gore and guts like in a horror flick, but to know how to tell the difference from the fake and the real. Most importantly, to point out how wrong it is in the real world and to reach back and let those lost and fallen to violence know they're not forgotten.

Visuals are important to the Ghost Bees. Apart from the cover image of Clara on the cake, made especially for the occasion, Amber Phelps Bondaroff designed the inside liner pages, using gouache paints and technical pens to create a series of illuminated texts.

Phelps Bondaroff, a multidisciplinary artist, wrote the words for each song in white ink against blues and greens of variously oceanic, forest and dusky shades. She traps the words in a bulbous teapot and somewhere in internal-body structures (a womb, a menacing, gaping mouth of a predatory fish or plant).

"It was the dead of winter and I was just sitting in my studio working," Phelps Bondaroff says. She welcomed the "hands-on" use of paint and pen as she was completing a digital project as part of a Centre For Art Tapes program.

"The lyrics evoke so many images," she says, adding how they also fit in with her own practice, which springs out as a "manifestation of my personal anxieties."

The third Ghost Bee, Phelps Bondaroff also grew up Jewish, though in Calgary. She toured with the band this past fall and will set off on this spring and early summer's version. While playing with Fall Horsie, the viola player remembers the first time she saw them. "I was totally taken aback," Phelps says about that show at the Bus Stop Theatre. "The whole room was completely silent. Everyone was completely enthralled."

Jon Lightman, who was part of Rotunda, a mime and comedic theatre group, can relate to that sensation of seeing his own daughters onstage. "They communicate in this very personal, sublime way where they're interacting at this deep, profound level that I can't even begin to imagine," he says. "They're constantly looking at each other and signalling each other. Man, it's very intense." - The Coast

Ghost Bees Don't Fight Like Tegan And Sara
Friday April 18, 2008 @ 04:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Ghost Bees
Ghost Bees

HALIFAX — Halifax's Ghost Bees, composed of Sari and Romy Lightman, have just released their Tasseomancy debut. Through their instinctual harmonies, the twin sisters weave tales — some fictional, others factual — into an artful tapestry. Almost dream-like upon first listen, Tasseomancy encompasses all the elements of a good fairy story, but don't mistake these diminutive creatures for angels. There's a twisted, almost sinister peculiarity about these Bees.

"Romy thought of our name, Ghost Bees," says Sari over a mug of loose leaf tea at Java Blend. "It's more of a childhood joke that became serious.

"It's taken on more of a contemporary meaning, our voices blending together and what with the bees going extinct. It works, I suppose."

The duo were originally from Toronto, but moved to Halifax to attend university. Over the past several years they've lived in various apartments strewn throughout the tattered north end community — sometimes together, other times apart. It's within this highly creative, constantly evolving atmosphere that the girls metaphorically learned to spread their wings.

Tasseomancy's cover features an antique oval portrait of a hearty, dark-haired woman with a distinct nose. The image is of Clara Chernos, the Jewish-raised twins' maternal great-great grandmother, a tea leaf reader who lived in a Russian village, survived pogroms and violence, and eventually immigrated to Canada. Tasseomancy is a divinatory form of fortune-telling through reading tea leaves which originated in the Middle Ages. The Bees learned more about Chernos through their grandmother Merele (their mother Ryla's mother), who would often read their fortunes from the bottom of tea cups.

"Our grandmother was never really serious about it like Clara," says Sari. "She would read the leaves and say something along the lines of, 'Oh, you are going on a long journey,' and we'd be heading out on tour or something.

"But she is a great source for sharing our family history. She loves to tell us stories of ancestors."

The album was produced by Andy March of Museum Pieces and released by his Youth Club Records label. Tasseomancy is filled with a cast of characters and creative pseudonyms, including: "Romulus Lightman" on voice and guitar; "Sari — the seal — Lightman" on mandolin, banjo and vocals; "Ambow Phelps Banaroff" on viola; "Ando March" on piano, drums and glockenspiel; "Anna — Sophia Vukovich — the great" on violin; and "Oren — the — Shtetl revivalist" on accordion.

The narrative-driven collection dives deeply into folkloric and historical themes. "Sinai" is named after Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, where the twins were born — Romy only moments before Sari in 1985. The choir-like refrain, "You came tumbling and I was sorry/How did you know that her womb was all rotten," references Sari's tumultuous entry into the world, as urgent measures had to be taken after she was stuck in the birth canal. "Erl King" is an adaptation of a poem by German writer Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. "Goldfish And Metermaids" draws upon recent history in Vietnam. "Tear Tassel Ogre Heart" revisits Pol Pot's death-filled regime in Cambodia.

When asked about musical influences, Sari — who wrote all of the songs on Tasseomancy (minus the secret untitled track) — spills a list of beloved authors and poets that includes Leonard Cohen, Flannery O'Connor and Jerome Rothenberg. She finds Ghost Bees' music unconventional and says their jarring vocals and obscure literary references are "kinda weird." Their melodies are unpredictable and don't ever quite find a resolution.

Unlike the bickering banter found at Tegan And Sara shows, the Bee twins leave their conflicting opinions off-stage.

"Sure, sometimes it's hard working with your sister," says Sari. "But it's not like we're gonna break up.

"We shared a womb. I think we can make it work more than anyone else."

Tasseomancy merely hints at the charisma and character of the Ghost Bees, whose live show is a theatrical charade filled with costumes, glitter and the most eclectic merch table. Their CD release show at Halifax's North Street Church featured handmade brooches and handbags, brownies and cookies for sale. - chart attack

GHOST BEES Tasseomancy
Youth Club Records YC 008

Ghost Bees
“Last evening I fell for a vampire…” – and you yourself are as likely to fall for Ghost Bees’ unique brand of spooky-folk when you’re sucked in by that opening gambit, compellingly vocalised in eerily shifting girl-sibling harmony after a minor-key prelude of gently plucked rhythmic mandolin, guitar, droning viola, glissando violin and t(w)inkling glockenspiel, the imagery dancing into your ears in queasily appealing waltz-time. It’s a strange but aggressively beautiful, and often melancholy, sound-world (reminiscent of the weirder experiments of the ISB, Fit & Limo or Kate Bush), which spills over into, nay fairly characterises, the rest of this teasingly brief (35-minute) yet highly treasurable disc from “twin telepaths” Romy and Sari Lightman who hail from Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The seven songs making up their debut offering are as tales told by a two-headed balladeer, replete with distinctly whimsical, occasionally overwrought but intensely evocative language, recounting or reflecting on matters of fantasy and ancestral nostalgia. Literacy is a byword, and the esoteric album title denotes the practice of tea-leaf reading! Indeed, the art of divination will, I suspect, also stand you in good stead with the duo’s chimerical lyrics, which address the bleak and frightening in our lives (for instance, the experience of birth in Sinai, infanticide in the malevolent Goethe-gothic of Erlking and the terror of the Pol Pot regime in Tear Tassle Ogre Heart).

Sometimes enigmatic, but invariably enthralling listening; I’m still not sure what it all adds up to, even after several plays, but I’m downright enchanted and sufficiently intrigued to persist and listen again – and closely. I’m sure Ghost Bees have chosen their name carefully, for their music creates somewhat of a spectral buzz for sure – an insistent thrumming ambience that just won’t go away: and genuinely scary!

www.myspace.com/ghostbees, www.youthclub.ca
David Kidman - fRoots

Ghost Bees find their future in the past
Trio mines folk traditions for bewitching blend
By STEPHEN COOKE Entertainment Reporter
Fri. Apr 11 - 4:47 AM

[The Halifax art folk trio Ghost Bees releases its debut CD Tasseomancy tonight at the North Street Church with a host of special guests, including Dallin, Stacy Lloyd Brown, A Helpful Diagram and Fall Horsie. Showtime is 8 p.m. (ANDY MARCH)</p>]

The Halifax art folk trio Ghost Bees releases its debut CD Tasseomancy tonight at the North Street Church with a host of special guests, including Dallin, Stacy Lloyd Brown, A Helpful Diagram and Fall Horsie. Showtime is 8 p.m. (ANDY MARCH)



When Halifax folk ensemble Ghost Bees played a showcase during ECMA weekend in Fredericton, it wasn’t under ideal conditions. But somehow the bracing harmonies of sisters Sari and Romy Lightman cut through the din of schmoozing and boozing to reach a group of enraptured listeners, including many who likely weren’t expecting to hear a Slavic-sounding melody inspired by a folk tale from Goethe in a New Brunswick sports bar.

Tonight, however will see Ghost Bees perform in a prime setting sound-wise, as the Lightmans launch their long-awaited debut CD Tasseomancy at the North Street Church at 8 p.m. with the assistance of A Helpful Diagram, Dallin, Stacy Lloyd Brown and Fall Horsie.

Before you go running off to Google, the title refers to the ancient art of tea-leaf reading, reflected on the disc itself by the image of the inside of a drained teacup, and on the cover by a tinted photo of the sisters’ great-great-grandmother, who brought her own tasseomancy skills to these shores from Eastern Europe over a century ago.

"We found out about her a couple of years ago," explains Romy. "She’s the earliest ancestor we know about, on our grandmother’s side, because she was orphaned during the pogroms. She had a really hard life, marrying a man twice her age and then coming to Canada where she didn’t speak the language, with five kids.

"She was a tea-leaf reader, and obviously a really creative person. We also found out she was a singer, so it’s neat to think that we might be fulfilling some of the desires that she might have had."

Over the past two years, Ghost Bees have been working on perfecting those desires for Tasseomancy, working with the Museum Pieces’ Andy March who produced as well as added piano and percussion.

The key to their sound is the harmonies; spun like filigree, but resilient, with a eerily beautiful precision, as they weave tales of ancient folklore colliding with modern living on songs like Vampires of the West Coast and Goldfish and Metermaids.

"A lot of them are based on personal experiences that Romy and I have encountered," says Sari. "We spent some time travelling—we went to Southeast Asia and lived in Thailand for a year, visiting Cambodia and Vietnam—and we picked up on the history there.

"And then we were inquiring into our own ancestry, wondering about where we came from, so a lot of these songs are about our own heritage. Fictionalized, obviously, when we write the songs it’s more of an objective interpretation. We grew up on comic books and horror movies, and our mom was a librarian, so we had this combination of literature as well as these morbid and grotesque things."

It all comes out in Ghost Bees songs like Erl King (the aforementioned Goethe tale) and Tear Tassle Ogre Heart, which references Pol Pot and the Killing Fields. They’re dark stories leavened by Ghost Bees’ acoustic textures and archaic harmonies in a contrast that isn’t always calculated.

"They definitely weren’t written with that in mind, but it’s a really delicate balance, I find," says Sari. "Even adding one more thing . . . we play with a viola player now (Amber Phelps Bondaroff), which completely changes the elements and shifts the balance."

"It’s just different," adds Romy. "Even when it’s just the two of us, it’s so bare in a lot of ways, one little change can make it feel like we’ve gone too far."

( scooke@herald.ca - Chronicle Herald

Discorder
April 2008
The Ghost Bees
Hailing From Halifax, Nova Scotia, twins Romy and Sari Lightman have banded together to form the avant-garde folk group, Ghost Bees. Their debut album, Tasseomancy, is a collection of eerie mythical figures and spooky chronicles of ancestry. These songs emulate a sense Nova Scotian heritage infused with a contemporary flare. These two have been compared with another folk prodigy, Joanna Newsom, due to the similarity of their carefully crafted folk tales. However, the Ghost Bees’ sound is more accessible to a larger crowd than Joanna Newsom’s music is: the harmonies of their voices are more enchanting and the collaboration between the two results in a unique shoegaze type of folk that forms an anomalous listening experience. The sisters express nostalgic tales in a fantastical realm, detailing the background of their birth in “Sinai,” stories about the Pol Pot Regime in “Tear Tassle Ogre Heart,” and a fable that begins in the kitchen of The Grandmother in 1904. The most fascinating track on the record, “Vampires of the West Coast,” harmonizes to form a visual that reverberates through all of these inventive stories. Combined, these elements prove Tasseomancy is a strong starting point for a promising band. Ghost Bees’ debut album does not lack experience – it offers its listeners a new kind of folk that is both intriguing and haunting.
Terris Schneider
- the Discorder

This week's feature: Ghost Bees

Ghost Bees, Tasseomancy (Youth Club)

WHO

Spooky, folkie twins from Halifax.

DISCOGRAPHY

Tasseomancy (Youth Club, 2008)

IN A NUTSHELL

Tasseomancy is dark, unsettling, and absolutely impossible to turn away from.

THE STORY

There's one obvious comparison a lot of people are going to make when talking about Ghost Bees, so we should get that out of the way right off the bat: they sound a little like Joanna Newsom. While there are more than a few differences between the duo's debut, Tasseomancy, and what Newsom did on Ys, there's no denying that both Romy and Sari Lightman have, shall we say, idiosyncratic vocal styles.

Of course, this is also the point at which the two acts' paths diverge. Where Newsom's voice makes some (okay, me) feel like they're listening to someone scraping forks together on a blackboard, the Lightman twins' voices are actually kind of pleasant. They're not as high-pitched, for one thing, and for another their many moments of beautiful harmonies show that they compliment each other perfectly. While there's definitely something childlike in their singing, there's even more of a strange, unsettling feeling running throughout both the vocals and everything else.

It's this darkness that makes Tasseomancy so enjoyable. Like any good gothic horror novelists, Romy and Sari Lightman have created a world full of mystery and darkness, with the faint whiff of the supernatural lurking around every corner. In "Erl King, for example, they sing lines like "Though your eyes appear wary and withdrawn / I'll be dead before dawn", about a child terrified that evil spirits have come to take him away, only for his father to tell him to not let his imagination run away with him (one guess as to what fate befalls him).

In fact, even though Tasseomancy is only six songs long (seven if you count the hidden track at the end), it has a body count that would make the Brothers Grimm blush. In four of the songs, villages are razed to the ground; three times by unnamed terrors, and the fourth by vampires (in the delightfully spooky "Vampires of the West Coast"). There are girls who see their brothers disemboweled before them (in "Tear Tassel Ogre Heart", where the sisters sing "I know that you have an awfully big wound in your stomach / And I wish my dear brother I could be God and mend it / But god I trace your guts and wear them as a beauty mark"), and mothers of the bride reading dark portents in tea leaves (in the title track). For just over half an hour, Tasseomancy gives a frightening glimpse into the Lightman sisters' imaginations, and it's not a pretty place.

Yet, at the same time, it's breathtakingly gorgeous. As others have noted, there's an amazing contrast in Tasseomancy between the hopeless darkness of the lyrics and the beauty surrounding them. Whether it's in the sisters' vocals, or in the wide array of instruments, if you didn't know any better, you might swear that you were listening to something pure and lovely.

And this is what makes Tasseomancy such an enthralling listen. Just as the finest Victorian horror novels and ancient fairy tales were simultaneously repellent in their characters and morals, yet still hugely compelling, Ghost Bees have made an album that's impossible to turn away from because of its richness and vivacity. It may not be the happiest experience, but listening to Tasseomancy is nonetheless incredibly pleasurable.

Want to win Tasseomancy? Thanks to Youth Club, i(heart)music has a copy to give away. To enter to win, just e-mail me your name and address, and I'll pick a winner randomly! - iheartmusic

GHOST BEES - Tasseomancy Print E-mail
Written by Kindah Mardam Bey

tasseomancy.jpgCD Review
Artist: Ghost Bees
Title: Tasseomancy
Label: Youth Club Records
Publicity: Killbeat Music
Released: April 15th 2008

4 Stars

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey

From the debut EP of Ghost Bees, it is easy to predict that twin sisters Romy & Sari have a rich and textured future with their synchronized harmonies, pithy poetic lyrics and maudlin approach. Step into the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, The Brothers Grimm, or Tim Burton, and Tasseomancy might be the soundtrack to their thoughts. The Nova Scotia twins have named themselves Ghost Bees, with the album Tasseomancy named after the antediluvian art of prediction through tea leaves. Their songs are robust with images of dark and ironic fairytales; like the bitter taste of a strong tea but the sweetness of berries tempering the sipping of it.

Think of the feeling you get when you hear Sarah McLachlan's ‘Building A Mystery' or something out of the Tori Amos magical vault and you have an idea of how Ghost Bees' mixture of imaginary and surreal will mystically coagulate into your thoughts. Tasseomancy is a great debut EP, showing their range and distinct (unified) voice. Most of this album would make a great soundtrack to something out of Pan's Labyrinth or a film equally as dark and numinous.

Ghost Bees uses the mandolin, violin and guitar in subtle and important ways, evoking images of the past so painted with colour you might remember history as a beautifully constructed oil painting. What was most pleasing about the playful and gentle music was that it was paired with vocals that went against the grain and were not soft and ethereal sounding. In fact the vocals are grounded in that East Coast storytelling fashion where songs have to relay something; and in this case, the vocals are relaying a highly poeticized version of a story best suited to the intro ‘once upon a time.' The lack of frills to the singing and Enya-like quality easy to pair with such music, is unabashedly poignant, which makes the songs have a great buoyancy and playful all-knowing approach to them. I can't say Ghost Bees will be ‘the next big thing,' but they most certainly will cultivate a fringe popularity that will grow and permeate its society.


Vampires Of The West Coast
Sinai
Erl King
Tasseomancy
Tear Tassle Ogre Heart
Goldfish and Metermaids - AnE Vibe

Reviews:: Ghost Bees Tasseomancy
I've already gone crazy with my praise for Halifax's Ghost Bees. Their unique brand of swirling folk is truly hauntingly beautiful. I don't mean that in the way most reviewers do (Read - I'm not just tossing out an accepted term to describe folk music with bends and creaks).

No, I actually mean that as beautiful as the Lightman's songs are, at points they actually creep me out. Their debut EP - Tasseomancy - opens with the terrific Vampires of the West Coast (which the girls actually premiered on herohill's Halifax mix tape) and even as nice as the duel vocals and finger picked riffs are, the hair on my neck stands on edge when they ask, "If I were beautiful subtle & touchable, would you linger to suckle and lie in my bathwater?" I'm not even sure why, but the self doubt and desire to be desired in that statement just makes me shudder.

And that's the thing about these girls. They could easily write folk ditties and draw you in with their spare arrangements and quirky vocals, but they constantly push the comfort limits of the listener. The songs are really representations of a different world; one seen only in dreams (or nightmares), but the images are so vivid that they get seared into your brain instantly.

Tasseomancy evolves into a polarizing musical battle of rapid fire staccato vocals and chopped strings and graceful long notes and the result has the heightened intensity needed to tell a great story. The constant battle between beauty and anxiety reminds me of the juxtaposition between the real world and dream like wonder expressed by Guillermo del Toro in Pan's Labyrinth.

Tear Tassel Ogre Heart is a beautiful folk song full of harmonies, strings, and banjina and Romy and Sari's vocals are light and whimsical. The thing is, they are singing about large open stomach wounds, Pol Pot and Mao and death. While that might seem odd and awkward, it's the little things they do that make this song work so well. When the sing "uncovered in a mausoleum" without the help of any instrumentation, the track instantly becomes weightless and completely contrasts the heavy darkness that they built over the first three minutes.

Every note they play, every musical addition (the accordion really fits perfectly into Goldfish and Metermaids) and every vocal warble syncs perfectly with the lyrics and the feel of the record. The result is breathtaking, challenging and somehow still easy to listen to. Most of all, Tasseomancy proves Ghost Bees is really worth the praise I keep dumping on them. - Hero Hill

Ghost Bees Practice Tasseomancy
Posted on Monday 10 March 2008

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Some people say that twins have a sixth sense, an ability to mutually sense when their brother or sister is in a state of distress. Though telepathic interpretations remain too otherworldly to be of widely noted acceptance, it is not hard to fathom that twins often share a type of bond that is indescribable in mere words. Since twins are born and often raised together, I imagine that the shocking degree of emotional inseparability has something to do with paralleled brain structures, with both relaying similar emotions in regard to specific circumstances. That is just a mere guess though; apart from similar genetics, scientists do not have a concrete explanation for it. Now, if such twins happened to be musically capable to a collaboratively equivalent extent, imagine how flexible the working environment would be. With music often being a purging and delivery of emotions over wholly intended instrumentation, their similar ideals and emotions would likely create cause for a more efficiently productive atmosphere. I cannot speak for them personally, but it certainly shows on Ghost Bees‘ debut album, Tasseomancy, that these two Canadian twins possess the ability to work together in a form that simultaneously brings commendable results and expresses a bond that could only be found under familial circumstances.

Over the past year or so, I have noticed a pleasant developmental trend concerning the genre of folk music. Whereas stylistic limitations previously rendered the genre primarily inaccessible, indie music circles have increasingly been more acceptive of the style’s growing sense of ambition. Acclaimed artists like Marissa Nadler have shown no hesitation in their incorporation of psychedelic and shoegaze elements in folk, exposing a sub-genre that many have lovingly labeled as “dream-folk”. Ghost Bees are the latest to join the ascending ranks, portraying a hauntingly elegant form of folk music over lyrics that are poetically invigorating in meaning. Taking their lyrical influence from classic works of literature that deal with Gothic fiction, you can expect a slew of entertainingly original tales on the enchanting Tasseomancy. Whether the twins find themselves falling in love with a vampire on “Vampires of the West Coast” or recounting the candid circumstances of their birth on “Sinai”, the lyrical variability provides for plenty of engaging moments. Their instrumental focus remains one of subtle minimalism , incorporating a variety of brooding strings and subdued percussion over fastidious acoustic guitar progressions and hushed vocals; it is a style that lingers in less reverbed lamenting than Nadler, but the melodic consistencies create a more accessible listening experience when compared to the indie-folk likings of Joanna Newsom.

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In proper alignment with Ghost Bees’ lyrical emphasis on components that are either foreign or wildly unconventional, Tasseomancy takes its name from tasseography, the method of foretelling the future by interpreting patterns of tea leaves, wine sediments, or coffee grounds. The process is completely unfamiliar to me, but so is the nature of the events described throughout the album. Take “Vampires of the West Coast” for instance, an enjoyable opener that touches on the importance of patience and genuineness in a romantic relationship. It would sound standard enough if left as it is, but the underlying tone that the Lightman twins convey is one of extreme ingenuity. Falling in love with a vampire can be a complicated ordeal, especially when he is on his last legs. They make the events endearing though, playing with the eerie tone to the best of their ability in the instrumental compatibility of the finger-plucked acoustic guitar and the forlorn use of strings. “He sings like a matchstick with wolves by the fire and old prairie candles that creak like a choir,” the girls sing delicately, both their tones being of a striking similarity. With that in mind, it makes sense that the girls exchange vocal usage equally on the album. It simply does not matter which one of the Lightman twins sings at any given time, as both of their vocals relay a form of captivating delicacy that is equal in comparison.

“Sinai” is another great example of the twins’ avant-garde tendencies, portraying their own birth as if they had the comprehension to remember their aligning emotions during the first moments of their lives. The first line spoken is, “You came tumbling outwards across the bedsheets across our mother’s bruised bloodroot thighs while I gathered courage inside the omphalos, too crooked and sorry to move.” Descriptive enough for you? Considering that Romy was born 5 minutes before Sari, it is apparent that the beginning of “Sinai” is from the perspective of Sari. While I imagine that the content will make some queasy, I can’t help but to commend the twins for making such an engagingly creative song. Though the strings do not make their usual noteworthy appearance on “Sinai”, occasional percussion and a twinkling glockenspiel provide the backing instrumentation over the consistent use of the acoustic guitar. The strings make their most memorable appearance on “Tear Tassle Ogre Heart”, with the track also being arguably the most melodically accessible on Tasseomancy. The twins’ vocals (in duet form) are most whimsical here as well, attempting a wider melodic range than displayed in their other tracks. Once again using a mythological creature for metaphorical purposes, the track is inherently descriptive of the Pol Pot Regime, depicting terror through cities “with their red embers burning”. The worthwhile debut from Ghost Bees will drop on April 15th, with it being a recommendation for all fans of unconventional folk music. - Obscure Sound

Reviews:: Ghost Bees Tasseomancy

I've already gone crazy with my praise for Halifax's Ghost Bees. Their unique brand of swirling folk is truly hauntingly beautiful. I don't mean that in the way most reviewers do (Read - I'm not just tossing out an accepted term to describe folk music with bends and creaks).

No, I actually mean that as beautiful as the Lightman's songs are, at points they actually creep me out. Their debut EP - Tasseomancy - opens with the terrific Vampires of the West Coast (which the girls actually premiered on herohill's Halifax mix tape) and even as nice as the duel vocals and finger picked riffs are, the hair on my neck stands on edge when they ask, "If I were beautiful subtle & touchable, would you linger to suckle and lie in my bathwater?" I'm not even sure why, but the self doubt and desire to be desired in that statement just makes me shudder.

And that's the thing about these girls. They could easily write folk ditties and draw you in with their spare arrangements and quirky vocals, but they constantly push the comfort limits of the listener. The songs are really representations of a different world; one seen only in dreams (or nightmares), but the images are so vivid that they get seared into your brain instantly.

Tasseomancy evolves into a polarizing musical battle of rapid fire staccato vocals and chopped strings and graceful long notes and the result has the heightened intensity needed to tell a great story. The constant battle between beauty and anxiety reminds me of the juxtaposition between the real world and dream like wonder expressed by Guillermo del Toro in Pan's Labyrinth.

Tear Tassel Ogre Heart is a beautiful folk song full of harmonies, strings, and banjina and Romy and Sari's vocals are light and whimsical. The thing is, they are singing about large open stomach wounds, Pol Pot and Mao and death. While that might seem odd and awkward, it's the little things they do that make this song work so well. When the sing "uncovered in a mausoleum" without the help of any instrumentation, the track instantly becomes weightless and completely contrasts the heavy darkness that they built over the first three minutes.

Every note they play, every musical addition (the accordion really fits perfectly into Goldfish and Metermaids) and every vocal warble syncs perfectly with the lyrics and the feel of the record. The result is breathtaking, challenging and somehow still easy to listen to. Most of all, Tasseomancy proves Ghost Bees is really worth the praise I keep dumping on them.

[MP3]:: Tasseomancy
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Posted by ack on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 5:27 PM
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