Monday, April 3, 2023

Resurrectionists - Now That We Are All Ghosts

Four men in a pool. One is wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and is wielding a guitar in the direction of the camera.
Photo credit: TW Hansen

Hello there! Time for this blog to resurface and send a jolt to your RSS feeds as I add an entry to the Where Are They Now tag with a release from Joe Cannon's current band, Resurrectionists

Their new album is called Now That We Are All Ghosts and you really need to go listen to it.

The opening track starts with sparse banjo lines and soon gets loud with a bass line that sounds like it could fit in the score of a cinematic apocalypse and...distorted banjo? Yes, distorted banjo! The band had a lineup change which led to pedal steel guitar being replaced by a new member adding texture with guitar effect wizardry and keyboards. The sequencing brings delights like the fingerpicked meditation of "Break & Enter Part 2" giving way to the driving build of "The New Winter," which has a guitar line that I could probably have guessed was played by Joe even if I heard it out of context.

And then there's "Let Me Talk You Through This One," whose title I have typed out enough times in text threads enough that my phone's autocorrect will suggest the correct capitalization for me. It first appeared many years back as "Let me talk you through this one, lover" on the first Intelligibles album.  There, it was just Joe and his guitar. Here, it features a lovely understated arrangement from the full band. The final chorus may be my favorite musical moment of 2023 so far.

You can get some more info on the Resurrectionists and Joe's own musical history, including his South Bend Power 90s days, by listening to his appearance on the Watt From Pedro Show.*

Now That We Are All Ghosts is officially out in the world as of today. You can listen and buy vinyl, CD, and digital versions at the Bandcamp link below.  Resurrectionists also commissioned videos for every track on the album, the first two of which you can view on their YouTube page.  They are for the opening (A Classic Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue) and closing ((hotel with pool)) tracks.





* Yes, that's Joe talking to Mike Watt from Minutemen and fIREHOSE and yes, I'm still kind of riding on the contact high of hearing Watt ask questions about emiLy.