The Death of Money – Ghost Pains
Losing youth is more painful to those who pay attention, or to whom it matters. There’s a breaking point for all of us when age itself has complete control of what we are. When our hair is streaked with silver, when the skin is loose on the bones, and the flesh translucent, the effect of age can crumble. In many cultures this process is more poignant for women, whose bodies constantly strive towards an unattainable totem formed from masks, paint, jewelry, perfumes, and false, manipulated images. We decry such processes, yet they’re older than we think. Once, in a suitcase of old family portraits at a sale, I found an old photograph of a bride taken in the 1950s. She seemed stuck in an age of naive purity, her hair shining and her skin beautifully opaque, from a time where everything was more pure and we had few questions about what it all meant. Then, below it, under another photograph, I found its counterpart, and I saw the truth. What I found was a young girl covered with natural imperfections, her lower back bulbous, her stomach slightly round, a sagging under her eyes, and, more profound, lines delicately drawn on the photograph all over her body. They were corrections in order to create the final image, the first one I saw, the one that was never real. Touching up photographs is like touching up the face or body, a surface trick to hide imperfections. If one’s identity becomes too attached to appearance, specifically our raw nudity, when it falls the rest of our being goes with it. As I look at the cover of this LP, I can imagine the pains of such a woman, watching eyeliner drag along weakening skin, and the feeling hitting her that she is but a ghost walking. A ghost fading, slowly, that yet breathes and grasps at every last strand of the fabric that covered the truth floating away into nothing. Pulling at her skin, covering her fading youth with color, it’s a feeling that becomes inescapable when it hits. And thus begins the Ghost Pains.
I feel this way too much because I’m so enthralled by death. I always have been, and especially in widespread belief concerning ghosts, something that every culture has a native tradition of, or one which assimilated those of others. Ghosts, yes, I could read a good ghost story from the 19th century probably every night, and I kind of wish I had a soundtrack, something modern though, that captured that essence of fading away. I like beautiful death and the mental anguish that comes before it, so let me introduce you to an interesting three piece from out of the United Kingdom, who, considering they’ve been around since 2007, under a slightly different name originally (The Death of Her Money), have surprisingly yet to get the attention from the underground they deserve. Their rather impressive discography, which you can check out by clicking here, is basically flawless from inception to this newest work, Ghost Pains. No background needed before I move ahead and explain, but seriously take some time and let their music sink a bit of age into your soul before I continue. These aren’t reviews anymore, you should remember, these are experiences.
Ghost Pains takes genre-mashing to the level it always needs to be at for this type of post-rock. The Death of Money cover their work in tags, but unlike a desperate band searching for meaning through digital manipulation, much like cosmetics, they deserve all of them. Post-goth, post-metal, experimental, doom, and just add some -gaze to basically any of it. As usual, I loved the cover before I listened to it, and then I sank into some sort of bizarre loathing and enjoyment of approaching physical decay. Ghost Pains edged up out of a dark corner with its spectral hands peeling away my false layers, albeit slowly. Considering this band’s a three-piece, the expression they manage to pull together is commendable. The key is it doesn’t take effects or multiple tracks. It instead absolutely requires a musician’s connection to their instrument so their emotions are channeled into itlike part of their body, a further expression of internal, amorphous forms we turn into ideas and expressions. For a band to strike at the heart of their listener, not only does each musician need this connection, it has to extend to the others, creating a Gestalt being whose output becomes the Holy Trinity of Gothic-doom-gaze-experimental. The rapport one can sense between these three isn’t just strong, it’s internalized. Each instrument plays on the other, swarming around the central focus of the vocals by Darren Kaskie, who moans as though each syllable is carried on his last breath. There’s a longing here, a sadness, a beautiful sense of personal decline. Few bands can capture this type of sound without losing themselves in one genre or another, or without fading themselves after the one track that really grabs you. Not here, I was grabbed by all of it, it all pressed broken lipstick under my eye and tore off my skin. Perhaps the reason The Death of Money has yet to achieve a wider following is they don’t just fit everywhere, they fit nowhere. You have to want to be a part of what they do, to really sense the internal drama of their music and what it means, and since most of us are too connected to our technology to remember we’re all on a slow path of decline, perhaps it will never happen. But I’d rather be one of the few who “gets it” then one of the majority who only does at the end for a few brief shares on Facebook. People consume things too quickly these days, and this is something that is consumed over time, and then again, and again. Remember that kind of listening? Get back into it.
The Death of Money Official Facebook
Written by Stanley Stepanic
The Death of Money: Ghost Pains
SuperFi Records
4.8 / 5