Downlight:
Radio Ghost:
Tapete:
CD/LP/DD:
Out September 25th:
★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Seattle songwriter Paul Hiraga has been quietly wheeling out his Downpilot alter-ego for some years now with Radio Ghost being his first in four. It's a reflective, downbeat and atmospheric mixture of out-of-town Americana and hazy AOR that recalls Reckoning-era REM, mid-period Gene Clark and earlier songs by The National yet ends up ringing with Hiraga's trademark harmonies and arrangements.
There's nothing too taxing here - Radio Ghost is all about simplicity rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, with the title-track and Reno both starting the album in the same fashion as it ends. Half-speed or laid-back, call it what you will but with Hiraga pretty much playing the entire album (bar backing vocals and strings), a nod of approval is surely the least of your reactions.
The latter half of the album is redolent of remote sun-drenched landscapes and weather-beaten outhouses in some far-flung corner of the world. The Collector proves to be the perfect accompaniment to this vision with its woozy languid aura enriched by the use of analogue instruments and lack of studio trickery, while the album's closer Suzanne (The Silence) drones assuredly like Eden by Talk Talk or Heroin by Velvet Underground, before building into something of an epic curtain-call.
Tapete's consistency has lain not with its bands but with its understated songsmiths, such as Christian Kjellvander, Stephen Duffy, Bill Pritchard and, most recently, Robert Forster. Hiraga's name should certainly be added to the label's Hall of Fame.
Radio Ghost:
Tapete:
CD/LP/DD:
Out September 25th:
★★★★★★★☆☆☆
There's nothing too taxing here - Radio Ghost is all about simplicity rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, with the title-track and Reno both starting the album in the same fashion as it ends. Half-speed or laid-back, call it what you will but with Hiraga pretty much playing the entire album (bar backing vocals and strings), a nod of approval is surely the least of your reactions.
The latter half of the album is redolent of remote sun-drenched landscapes and weather-beaten outhouses in some far-flung corner of the world. The Collector proves to be the perfect accompaniment to this vision with its woozy languid aura enriched by the use of analogue instruments and lack of studio trickery, while the album's closer Suzanne (The Silence) drones assuredly like Eden by Talk Talk or Heroin by Velvet Underground, before building into something of an epic curtain-call.
Tapete's consistency has lain not with its bands but with its understated songsmiths, such as Christian Kjellvander, Stephen Duffy, Bill Pritchard and, most recently, Robert Forster. Hiraga's name should certainly be added to the label's Hall of Fame.