The Ghosts of Kodiak

The Ghosts of the Kodiak embody the “diamond in the rough”. Hailing from Clemson, South Carolina, this Indie-Rock band has packed more depth and passion into their latest release, “Lifting Up the Ceilings”, than most bands pack into an entire album.  And they did it in less than 20 minutes.

The simple beauty of a real piano is captured in Andante in D, an instrumental introduction that is the unsettling calm before a beautiful storm.  In the next track, Lights, they immerse you in a dynamic back and forth, as if the almost whispered delivery is a slow leak, but does nothing to relieve the intensity of his words when the dam finally bursts.  It opens with a simple plea; “Cut off the lights and sing us both to sleep”.  But before long, these same words evolve from a request to a desperate cry, and then to an agonizing scream.

“Drink up darling, it’s a cure, but it’s a fix

Turn the lights off, sometimes it’s better to forget”

(did I mention how poetic the lyrics are?)

Dirt on Your Face doesn’t let up for a second, continuing the feeling of a runaway train that is only seconds from jumping the track.  By the time he is done repeating “I will gladly take the blame for what I’ve done” he finally loses all control and screams with everything he has.

My personal favorite track, Don’t Get Carried Away, is another experiment in dynamics of instrumentation and delivery, again traversing the entire spectrum from a whisper to a roar.  The lyrics again play a key role in powerful, resonating nature of the song.

“What am I supposed to do, I’m a prophet and fool

I’m a weapon and a tool, I bend the lines to break the rules” 

“I put the needle in my vein, and shot me up with Novocaine

but when it wasn’t sinking in, you shot me up with heroin”

The EP ends with a seamless transition into the finally track, Vehicles.  All the instruments and distractions drop, save a single guitar, whose presence only serves to accent the loneliness and emptiness of the melody.  The theme of a fruitless, meaningless feeling is laid out in tragically poetic form here again:

“The words they came and left, but the feelings never did

I tried to feel something, just anything but nothing 

and i wanted to be anywhere, but nowhere, just somewhere” 

By the time he prays “My God when it is ever enough“, the song has already displayed the characteristic unpredictability of the entire EP, and it ends likewise, refusing to resolve, and fighting at every turn the various cadences to which we have grown so accustomed.

This is the kind of EP that not only gets better with time, but one that I can’t wait to rediscover ten years from now and immerse myself in all over again.

Find more about the band on their Bandcamp page, Youtube channel, , Twitter @GhostsOfKodiak and SoundCloud.

Adam Palmer is half of the awesome indie pop duo The Last City, that got featured in Flowers In A Gun some time ago. Check out the article about them here.