EP Review: Ghost – Phantomime

By BRIAN GIFFIN

I HAVE opined before that Ghost – insofar as it exists as the outlet for Tobias Forge – is creatively similar to David Bowie. Not in the way that Bowie was an era-defining Renaissance Man, an artistic force of nature who became one of the greatest cultural icons of the last 50 years, but more along the lines of the way in which he so intuitively took from his influences and crafted them into works of his own.

While Ghost has never been as innovative or experimental as Bowie, their combination of Swedish melodicism, ABBA, Mercyful Fate, disco, Blue Öyster Cult, Alice Cooper, electronica, 70s doom, modern arena rock and myriad other elements has turned them into a worldwide sensation. They are an act that is arguably at a commercial and critical peak, a point Bowie had arrived at 50 years ago when he decided an album of covers was a good idea.

It was not a good idea. Half a century on and Pin Ups is still regarded as a creative low point for Bowie, only really remembered by most for “Sorrow”. Phantomime is likely to go the same way, and for a lot of the same reasons: while this EP will introduce many of Ghost’s legion of fans to some great songs, the performance of them doesn’t do them justice.

The shiny production and Forge’s smooth, melodramatic vocals robs The Stranglers’ “Hanging Around” of all the grit and grime that made it so immediate and edgy. The weird intrusion of part of the solo from “You Give Love a Bad Name” into this track is one of the few real artistic flourishes Ghost adds to any of them. Again like Bowie, Forge appears to have made the decision to play these songs as “straight” as possible, but the heavy-handed production and basically flat delivery drains all the passion from a track like Television’s “See No Evil”. “We Don’t Need Another Hero” is a big, brassy, rousing rallying cry from one of the best black singers of all time, but with the funk ripped out, it’s just a lame metal song.

The one metal cover that’s here, Iron Maiden’s “Phantom of the Opera”, is equally passionless, and it’s pretty much Forge’s fault. He is either unable or unwilling to sing in a manner that lends itself to any of the necessary emotion that any of these songs require. By not really changing the songs much, either, except to maybe industrify the riffs a bit or strip out key aspects without replacing them with anything devalues them to the level of a stop gap afterthought.

Despite their detractors, Ghost have been one of the most interesting artists to emerge in the rock world over the past decade and a half, but Phantomime does nothing for their reputation. It’s a real no-win situation: Fans of the original songs have every right to forget this exists, fans of Ghost should ignore it and haters will hate them even more.