Minus Story - No Rest ForGhosts

Tue 20th Dec, 2005 in Music Reviews

The Minus Story clearly have a deep love for the friendly ghosts of the world, as No Rest for Ghosts follows up thematically on last year’s deliriously named The Captain is Dead, Let the Drum Corpse Dance! album. It comes as not great shock to discover that their website seeks stories of zombies, antarctic exploration, mind control, giant squid and, of course, ghosts. Luckily for all involved the restless dancing ghosts and corpses of the Minus Story have only the most fleeting of connections with friendly Caspers of the Christina Ricci-romancing variety.

If the felt and loose stitch skull on the cover doesn’t indicate the melancholic innocence of the record than the bands history offers its clues. The origins of the Minus Story are found many years ago in a childhood trinity of little league games, kindergarten and Nintendo Club. Color Me Bad gave way to Led Zeppelin and the Sex Pistols, yet rather than approaching the swagger of those bands the resulting sound of these childhood friends is far closer to the widescreen sweep of Black Heart Procession or their recent touring partners Okkervil River.

The Minus Story’s musical method is also well visualised by that cover image of stitched felt and cloth, layering and binding together tiny pieces to create the picture. The eerily beautiful choir chorus of Ringing in the Dark works as something of an ode to the bands sound, as they reach for the heights to declare

all we are is instruments
and all we are is innocence
we’re ringing in the dark.

The Minus Story embrace a self described ‘Wall of Crap’ approach to sound, where layers of chiming guitars melding with a whole music box of xylophone, keyboards, muted horns and percussive sighs and brushes. It’s now unnecessary for a de-yelped Modest Mouse to record a tribute to a half-remembered Phil Spector in an abandoned concert hall, filled with ghosts, pirates and dust. The Minus Story have beaten them to it.

No Rest For Ghosts’ ten tracks fill this hall with songs that ache suggestion rather than statement.  Its probably worth noting that the band take their name from their idea of what makes Mulholland Drive a better film than, say… Casper. It’s in the lack of solid narrative – the story is a ‘minus story’, told in glimpses and gaps. The stories of Ghosts are in the spaces between the words; written on the wall of sounds.

The album’s ten minus stories have tales of soul eating clouds and lemming-like cliff jumping in their shadows. While album highlight Little Wet Head is surely the most joyous song about cannibalism ever committed to tape. It’s also features some of the albums more direct lyrics, as the song grows fat on layers of instrumentation that, like the lyrics, threaten to swallow lead-singer Jordan Geiger.

you plant my head in your jaws
in your mouth your jaws are wet
your jaws are red

There’s a brief excursion into the belly of the giant for a snack of echoing bossa nova, then it’s wafer upon wafer till the track bursts into its ecstatic cry.

chomp me down
push me out

The rest of the album offers similarly fanciful jewels. Knocking on Your Head’s clattering wooden xylophone beat, Hold On’s sighing, resigned choir introduction (we’re lost, we’re lost, and we can’t get back to the only place we’ve been) and the tiny, fearful voice on There is a Light, hiding behind the piano chords and hushed trumpet calls.

Each listen seems to shift a little more of the dust from the sound revealing new layers beneath; in a just world No Rest For Ghosts would haunt the airwaves.