albums of 2008 – ghost town

dan friel – ghost town (important)

if the magnetic fields added noise to pop, then dan friel from parts & labor must have added pop to noise in his solo album ghost town. listening to this reminds me of why i loved battles‘ mirrored so much last year – the lasting novelty of letting the combinations of new sounds speak to you in a new way. clocking in at a modest half an hour, ghost town makes for an intense listen that often brinks on the unlistenable, if not for its unbelievably anthemic pop structure and the fact that i do think the screeches and wails really are trying to tell me something. it’s not easy towing that line between the brutally noisy and the hopelessly catchy, and it probably won’t go down very well with those who lean more on either side, but for those of us who love finding the gaps in the middle, it sure makes for an impressive experiment in industrial circus/bastardized pop (delete as you wish).

mp3: dan friel – ghost town (pt. 1)

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