Look at all those people! Everything seems bigger on Hour‘s newest album. There are fourteen people in the ensemble (four missing the photo shoot). The Bandcamp description is a thousand words long. The album is offered on black vinyl, colored vinyl, deluxe CD and promo CD. So why does Ghost Bridge sound so much smaller and more intimate ~ even more so than Subminiature?
The answers are the arrangements and the brevity. On Ghost Bridge, the Philly ensemble led by Michael Cormier-O’Leary continues its slow shift from post-rock to modern composition. The pieces – and by extension, the instruments – are given more room to breathe. A half dozen tracks unfold in a concise 36 minutes. Late in the set, a vocal selection slows the pace to a pleasant crawl. Hour is still more Rachel’s than Low, but is carving out a niche at a pace similar to that of a stream cutting channels in stone.
The title is taken from an “unrealized movie concept” about a disappearing and reappearing bridge. From this prompt, the album muses on tragedies, ghosts and the nature of the soul. Over a quarter of the album is devoted to the title track, whose very length suggests it bears the specter of post-rock. Solo piano is joined by light drums, then vibraphone, then all the other instruments in time, gathering like a crowd at a wake, forming layers of consolation, adding confidence and strength until the grief itself becomes a ghost. The end is a soft mist of notes, a few stragglers staying behind to whisper to the piano before they all go home.
But where did it all begin? “Pearls” is the opening track, proceeding from a series of repeated notes to engage in happy permutations. Little sorrow can be intuited here; instead the starting point is a breezy, carefree day, filled with horse-drawn carriages and hot air balloons until the full stop at the three-minute mark, when darker clouds can be seen on the horizon: not yet here, but on their way. The pianist stumbles; the string players look up; the concentration of the percussionist is disrupted. The flautist resets the mood: the sorrow has not yet approached, so let us savor the now. The sedate ending sets up “Centralia,” a series of layered phrases that circle back and repeat like recurring thoughts or the motivational sentences of friends.
Only after “Ghost Bridge” does “Sky Is Blue” emerge, perfectly placed as the first track on Side B, albeit jarring in the digital and CD versions. The lyrics, sung by Heeyoon Won, reveal it to be an extensive message from the great beyond, delivered by a loved one who is completely okay, filled with perspective, encouragement and hope. Should one not own the LP, we recommend moving “Sky Is Blue” to the finale. Given this sequencing, “So Long Without a Word” slips into the void at the end of “Ghost Bridge,” its melodic tones speaking directly to the soul, the full stop now at 2:00, followed by increasing energy and resolve. A third phase begins two minutes later with insistent, cinematic strums, then a playful series of shifts, jazz to chamber and back, like a playground ball. “Sonny” returns the timbre to post-rock and the mood to reflective yet ebullient, the ghost bridge now reappearing, the path between heaven and earth secure. (Richard Allen)
