Sick as a dog from a cold, I plan to struggle over to Cameo Gallery Saturday night to catch Gross Ghost, Odessa Record’s latest discovery whose Public Housing I liked but didn’t love but has had me listening, and concluding, if I saw the band live the album would click.
Paul Finn, Odessa Records owner, is one of those guys whose taste in music is really quite immaculate, in a different 2013, one without digital distribution, streaming and the absence of radio, he would be Jimmy Iovine, his taste is so good. I remember Paul once telling me that if Shit Horse didn’t break pop it was racism plain and simple. He was right to be shocked that a band that great wouldn’t be major, wrong about the industry. There is too much clutter, it is too hard to be heard above it all.
But if Finn approves enough to release a Gross Ghost record it is good enough a reason to listen to it.
I didn’t dislike the album but I wasn’t enthralled by Public Housing , Gross Ghost hit me as a local phenom. This is what their producer David Kovach had to say about my review: “Well that was creative and annoyingly personal saying nothing really about the quality and real potential of the band and this record. My review of the review is two words: “shit sandwich'”
Perhaps he’s right. I had been sitting on the review for a month trying to gain an opinion, and my opinion was a bit of a shrug. It doesn’t hit my melodic jones, and it doesn’t hit my rhythm jones. And there seem to be two reasons:
1. It is a regional phenomenon.
2. The songs aren’t quite there yet.
When it comes to questions of region, you can translate it like this: you gotta see em.
When it comes to a song,the band needs more than I can find the time to give it. Listening to the coda of “Ones I Love” it sounds so good, with its winding whinging slide guitar-y track and depressed vocal, the song builds to a break down. It is magical stuff and I bet it is better live… cool, but it took me three months to find it. The album is still not a favorite but I wonder how I’ll feel after catching em live. Again, I go back to trust. I trust Finn’s taste enough to assume I am missing something. Something in their sound isn’t quite connecting. The truth is you could throw a dart at a list of Odessa’s catalog and any album title you hit will be the best album you’ve ever heard, so I am guessing this isn’t the exception. Maybe it is something to do with the way they can shift tempos…
Anyway, I’ve been going to Arena shows for the past coupla months and I can’t help feeling it is time to get back to the rock club and I love Cameo Gallery despite it being in Brooklyn. Trust me folks, live Gross Ghost are gonna kill it here: