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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Heavy Ghost is certainly a moody piece, dark baroque pop, softly played but pretty brisk. A wonderful soup of sounds with Stith's finely toned voice multi-tracked to produce a small choir. With its solid songwriting, gorgeous vocals, and constantly interesting backing (piano, guitar, strings, horns and improvised percussion), the album seems to engage a listener at every moment. Horns, strings, voices interject perfectly, songs twist and turn unexpectedly.
It's released on Sufjan Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty label and this is arguably their finest release to date, excluding Sufjan's own works.
If you like Joanna Newsom, and wondered what was so difficult for others to get, and you're familiar with the complex broodiness of Grizzly Bear, then I think you'll appreciate this one too. My album of the year so far.
It's released on Sufjan Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty label and this is arguably their finest release to date, excluding Sufjan's own works.
If you like Joanna Newsom, and wondered what was so difficult for others to get, and you're familiar with the complex broodiness of Grizzly Bear, then I think you'll appreciate this one too. My album of the year so far.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
If you love performers with notable voices, you cannot complain about the noughties: this decade has so far seen the emergence of talented singers such as ANTONY HEGARTY, BABY DEE, PATRICK WOLF, SCOTT MATTHEW, CARLA BOZULICH...
Now add DM STITH to the list, for the N.Y. songwriter's début album is one of the big surprises of 2009. Just press PLAY and you will be enveloped by the tense, mysterious atmosphere of this record. HEAVY GHOST works as a whole: there are barely a few seconds' pause between the songs, the mood shifting around a bluesy folk-gospel template flecked by pianos à la SATIE, horns, violas and waves of choirs, all executed and mastered by Mr Stith's voice. And what a voice, indeed: mix NINA SIMONE's ballad style, NICK DRAKE, BRYAN FERRY, hints of JEFF BUCKLEY and you will have more than the sum of these parts, as is always the case with great vocalists.
The only fault that can be found with this cd is that the lyrics are not included (but a six-page booklet of images is); a real pity because DM STITH is not (due to his vocal style) the most intelligible singer in popular music. What can be gleaned from the lyrics, though, shows that the man has a way with words too. Introspective but tense, tenderly desperate and sensuous, these lyrics deal with obsessions, illuminations, damnation and (possibly) redemption. All classic themes, now ably refashioned by a new talent that we can only cherish and love. Body and soul.
Now add DM STITH to the list, for the N.Y. songwriter's début album is one of the big surprises of 2009. Just press PLAY and you will be enveloped by the tense, mysterious atmosphere of this record. HEAVY GHOST works as a whole: there are barely a few seconds' pause between the songs, the mood shifting around a bluesy folk-gospel template flecked by pianos à la SATIE, horns, violas and waves of choirs, all executed and mastered by Mr Stith's voice. And what a voice, indeed: mix NINA SIMONE's ballad style, NICK DRAKE, BRYAN FERRY, hints of JEFF BUCKLEY and you will have more than the sum of these parts, as is always the case with great vocalists.
The only fault that can be found with this cd is that the lyrics are not included (but a six-page booklet of images is); a real pity because DM STITH is not (due to his vocal style) the most intelligible singer in popular music. What can be gleaned from the lyrics, though, shows that the man has a way with words too. Introspective but tense, tenderly desperate and sensuous, these lyrics deal with obsessions, illuminations, damnation and (possibly) redemption. All classic themes, now ably refashioned by a new talent that we can only cherish and love. Body and soul.
7 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Mojo: "[It's] David Stith's turn now to fashion a brilliant hermetically sealed world that makes unabashed emotional connection.... Bon Iver wood-cabinessence with choral and tribal ambience." ****
Uncut: "Stith sings like a fallen angel - equal parts Antony Hegarty, Nina Simone and Jeff Buckley - but if he inhabits the same rarefied galaxy, his star shines very differently indeed... most of it performed by Stith himself and not - as the massed choral effects, swollen strings and rolling, minor piano chords might have you believe - borne to earth on the wings of a gilded seraphim....Echoes of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Robert Wyatt, but it's easy to imagine Mike Patton and Danny Elfman nodding their approval too. Apparently Stith shied away from any musical expression for years - in which case Heavy Ghost represents a quite spectacular plunge." ****
Q: "His debut album is extraordinary... Stith's stunning, multi-tracked voice effortlessly creates vocal harmonies that almost redefine "other-wordly"... each song is an equally moving melodic tour de force." ****
Uncut: "Stith sings like a fallen angel - equal parts Antony Hegarty, Nina Simone and Jeff Buckley - but if he inhabits the same rarefied galaxy, his star shines very differently indeed... most of it performed by Stith himself and not - as the massed choral effects, swollen strings and rolling, minor piano chords might have you believe - borne to earth on the wings of a gilded seraphim....Echoes of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Robert Wyatt, but it's easy to imagine Mike Patton and Danny Elfman nodding their approval too. Apparently Stith shied away from any musical expression for years - in which case Heavy Ghost represents a quite spectacular plunge." ****
Q: "His debut album is extraordinary... Stith's stunning, multi-tracked voice effortlessly creates vocal harmonies that almost redefine "other-wordly"... each song is an equally moving melodic tour de force." ****
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Heavy Ghost is heavy going .
I like textures in music .Textures make music more interesting than it might otherwise be and sometimes texture can be become what the music is all about , eschewing the usual... Read more
Published on 30 Mar 2009 by russell clarke
All that glitters in the music press.........
All of us will at some time have bought a CD without hearing a track and possibly based on the music press.
Some you win........... Read more
Some you win........... Read more
Published on 9 Mar 2009 by Billy R
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