Ghost Hospital – “D+” b/w “Religious Bias in Nursery Rhymes” 7” (Teen Ape)
Just like the cover photo of an infant wearing adult’s eyeglasses, the music on this 7” isn’t witty, clever, memorable, or cute. That would be less of an issue if Ghost Hospital didn’t believe they invented those four attributes. It would still be bad, but it wouldn’t be bad AND irritating. Underneath an equally tedious sub-genre that won’t be named or discussed in this review, there exists a micro-genre of early-to-mid 20-somethings that worship at the altar of faux-naiveté and wide-eyed kiddie quirkiness like late-period (read: “godawful”) Jonathan Richman, Daniel Johnston, the worst of the Irrelevant 6 bands (care to join the Music Tapes on an onstage trampoline? Anyone?), the altogether separate exploits of Of Montreal, or the Pacific Northwest (the part without a literal and figurative set of balls) never happened. Yes, navel-gazing has enjoyed yet another resurgence; this one fueled by AAO (the Arrogance of Assumed Originality). Ghost Hospital is acoustic-based pop set at half-spazz; grating nonsense that settles for public-domain melodies (like what a child would hum, or the random notes in a commercial jingle) over the task of writing REAL HOOKS. So, if your thing is obnoxious LA! LA! LA!’s on top of sub-par Violent Femmes/Dead Milkmen/Beat Happening shamble-crap courtesy of art-school manwafers that haven’t heard one or all of those bands and proudly say things like “I don’t own a TV,” and if the word “Ghost” in a band name or “Teen Ape” as a label name doesn’t send red flags crashing through the roof of your skull, suit-up in your stinky and wrinkled middle-management/horse-track-parking-lot-bum duds and please wreck that overpriced single-speed on the way to the record store. Now, if these guys didn’t believe that they invented witty, clever, memorable, or cute, I’m going to feel terrible. (http://www.teenaperecords.com)
(Andrew Earles)
