John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts [2013][EAC,log,cue. FLAC]

Artist: John Grant
Release: Pale Green Ghosts
Discogs: 4361438
Released: 2013-03-04 / 2013
Label: Bella Union
Catalog#: BELLACD377X / BELLACD377
Format: FLAC / Lossless / Log (100%) / Cue / CD
Country: Europe
Style: Electronic, Rock, Folk, World, & Country, Synth-pop, Folk Rock

Tracklisting:

01. Pale Green Ghosts (6:03)
02. Black Belt (4:18)
03. GMF (5:13)
04. Vietnam (5:28)
05. It Doesn't Matter To Him (6:26)
06. Why Don't You Love Me Anymore (6:11)
07. You Don't Have To (5:53)
08. Sensitive New Age Guy (4:41)
09. Ernest Borgnine (4:53)
10. I Hate This Town (4:03)
11. Glacier (7:37)

Credits: Show

"Go on and love me while it's still a crime," challenges the mordant, former Czars frontman on his astonishingly good second solo album, "Just don't forget you could be laughing 65 per cent more of the time." But Grant brilliantly skewers his own depression, addiction, bitchiness and heartbreak throughout a record which finds him mixing his penchant for corduroy, laid-back melodies with a new, rawly exposed synth-pop that feels like it's seeped up from an underground carpark, all hard concrete and cold, flickering fluorescents. A new light under which Grant can pick at his wounds.
Vitriol for a "callypigian" ex-boyfriend burns through so many of the songs that he almost called the album "The Anger Stage". Against the the dark, throbbing disco of "Black Belt" he sneers: "You are supercilious, pretty and ridiculous/ You got really good taste, you know how to cut and paste" while "Vietnam", whose sound brings back memories of the glossy 80s despair of The Cars -- sees him comparing the same man to Agent Orange, while admitting: " I simply cannot find inside of me/ The requisite press on." It's gloriously cathartic whilst always swerving shy of mawkish self-indulgence.
The wonderful "GMF" – which sways between self-aggrandisement and self-loathing -- is a return to the 70s sound of Queen of Denamrk, woven with gorgeous ribbons of chocolate-velvet harmony from Sinead O'Connor. The album ends with "Glacier", matching grand, Rachmaninovian piano ascents with some realistically soothing words. "Pain," says the man who was diagnosed HIV-positive in 2011, "is a glacier moving through you/ And carving out deep valleys/ And creating spectacular landscapes/ And nourishing the ground/ With precious minerals and other stuff/ So don't you become paralyzed with fear/ When things seem particularly rough."