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Locomotive Ghost
Seasons
Mossy Rock - 2014
Michael Panontin
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This Calgary quartet has been kicking around since the late noughts, when Mike Buckley and Ben Nixon met up in the picturesque BC interior as students in Selkirk College's music program. As Locomotive Ghost, the pair rifled off a couple of discs, a self-titled album in 2010 and Close Your Eyes and Listen a year later, before quitting the left coast for the big skies of Alberta, where they added multi-instrumentalists Laura Schoenberg and Matthew Howell to the fold.
Both albums came out in the more conventional CD format. But since no aspiring indie band is complete these days without some vinyl in the bins, Locomotive Ghost sought out something a little more original, settling on a series of limited DIY seven-inch EPs. "We had recorded a four-song EP called Winter that ended up evoking many seasonal feelings and images for us," Buckley told CM. "From there grew the idea of expanding on the concept and releasing a separate seven-inch vinyl disc for each season. Vinyl was simply something that we had wanted to do for a long time and this project was the perfect outlet for that dream."
Those records, with their simple but evocatively hand-painted covers and thematically tinted vinyl, were not just objects of physical beauty but also fine examples of the band's rustic country-folk sounds. Especially nice are the catchy, effervescent 'Dog Days' from the Summer EP and Winter's fleeting 'Afterglow', a somewhat moodier, more atmospheric departure for the group. And for those who may have missed out on all the fun, Seasons compiles all four EPs - that's sixteen tracks in all - into a swell full-length set, on CD or a deluxe CD/vinyl version.
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Locomotive Ghost
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Backward
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Monkey of Sousse
(independent)
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