Musée Mécanique ‘HOLD THIS GHOST’ (album review)
By Milo | February 11, 2010
Hold This Ghost feels like a proper record, a real collection of songs that works best listened to as a whole. Based around the songwriting partnership of Sean Ogilvie and Micah Rabwin, from Portland Oregon, Musée Mécanique are named after a collection of vintage amusement and musical instruments in San Francisco, aptly so because the album has the feel of a treasured item. In fact, as gorgeous as it sounds playing via my computer, it would probably sound best on vinyl, placed carefully on an old gramophone in a dusty attic, beams of daylight making the dust dance to its gentle rhythms.
Quite clearly influenced by Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs, each song is more like a fluid dreamscape, awash with the theremin-esque sounds of the musical saw, accordions, glockenspiel, and melodica. There is also a strong country influence, particularly on the late night bar-room piano melancholy of ‘Fits and Starts’. Elsewhere the rolling finger-picked guitars are definitely folk-influenced but subtly so, and lead vocalist Micah Rabwin is reminiscent of the (pleasantly) mannered Murray Lightburn from The Dears, but with a lighter touch and higher range somewhat reminiscent of the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne.
As much as I hate to say this given we’ve just endured so many from last year, this album ticks all the boxes for ending up in a lot of people’s 2010’s end of year lists. It may not do anything dramatically new or mindblowing, but the atmosphere and emotion are more than enough to justify repeated listens.
www.myspace.com/museemecanique
This review first appeared in the Products of a Gaseous Brain Spring 2010 Catalogue
You can hear the lead single ‘Like Home’ on the latest I Hear a New World podcast
2 Comments
Finbarr on 12/02/2010 at 1:17 pm.
I really like this album Milo. Just the right combination between earthy and dreamy. Although when I played it to my girlfriend, she thought the intro sounded like karaoke backing music…
Milo on 12/02/2010 at 1:24 pm.
Aye it’s braw – ha ha can’t hear it myself but maybe it was a subconscious love of karaoke that made me like it so much!