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Save Our Souls
The Belmont getting noise complaints; getting jumped on the street; gun-shots filling the silences between your songs at rehearsal; the fizzled "next-Seattle-myth"; the crooked politicians and the pre-Super-Bowl-half-assed-dirt-swept-under-the- carpet maneuver to fool the world …
I meet Tait (vocals, keyboards, puppets) and Lela Metro (bass, skirts, headwounds) on The Belmont’s patio and this all gets covered in the first six minutes. Ghost City is a sweet allegory for a city we all hate sometimes, yet never leave …
"Seeing the good … and the bad,” says Lela. “It’s kinda like …” Tait searches for a word, “Apocalypse,” and he regales Detroit’s flirtation with “It”-dom at the turn of the millennium and yet, now … “right back to Beirut.” “We’re still here,” assures Lela. “Yeah, sure,” says Tait, “it’s not pessimism toward the music that’s floating around, it’s more …” “The way the city’s operating.” Lela finishes.
All four band members, including Stephen Palmer Overdrive (vocals, guitars, bloody hammers) and Brandon Codeine (stix, threads … er, goth stuff) grew up in/around Detroit, two on the west, two on the east, and have been living the local band life up, down, left, right, start-select, a-b-a, over the last decade — so they know what they’re talking about.
Tait is also the keyboardist for the Electric 6 and is days from leaving for a worldwide tour, as is Lela, who just joined the reformed Von Bondies. Before that though, their other band will release its debut, a baker’s dozen of shimmering pop with droning guitar feedback, chilly-but-cherubic electronics, gritty-but-heavenly guitar solos, strutting bass-lines and detached, experimental percussion.
The band formed out of a longtime friendship between Tait and Stephen (who tenured in Back in Spades.) “He and I had been trying to do something for five years,” says Tait. “Ten years ago, I was in a totally different band, he was in a totally different band, but we played together all the time. I wrote a couple songs and recorded them with Zach (of E6) and played it to Stephen one night and that was it — we just decided we were both kinda fed up with living here, but like I said, it’s kind of a bittersweet thing.”
Detroit’s “a big ball of musicians” and the duo set to steal (or borrow?) themselves a rhythm section, Brandon from the Friends of Dennis Wilson and Lela from the Sirens. “We’re all a happy family … that’s against each other,” says Tait. “Aren’t they all?” quips Lela. I ask about the goth-label being tossed on them. “That was interesting,” says Tait. “I think it’s just …” “We dress in black,” says Lela offhand. “People like to take a look at something and they instantly have an idea in their head …” “It’s not like a happy-poppy-go-lucky kinda band,” says Lela. “There’s a lot of humor,” adds Tait, “in the bleakness. There’s definitely a song about fellatio and a song about hobos.” | RDW
Ghost City’s CD Release Party • October 1 • Cliff Bell’s
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