McCrimson – Ghosts (Album Review)

In their debut album, the artist known as McCrimson offers a 12 song project that focuses on themes of truth through tragedy, social/political commentary, and calls for unity. Bending between genres of Post-Punk Revival, Darkwave, and Singer-Songwriter, McCrimson’s songwriting is front and center as their perspective of various hardships about their identity, purpose, and longing for love drive the album. With a style that is similar to Dead Man’s Bones with some vocal moments lending way to that of James Murphy (Lead singer of LCD Soundsystem), McCrimson explores different styles throughout.

McCrimson offers a few strengths throughout this album starting with their songwriting. Tracks like spectre song, torture (<3), and hot single ghosts (crying) in your area offer some unique, honest, and vulnerable lyricism. Spectre song, which gives the perspective of a ghost wanting to possess the body of someone that more closely aligns with their sexuality, is a fresh and unique storytelling device about a feeling of internal unrest that starts the thematics of the album off strong. Torture (<3), a track full of poetically self-deprecating lyricism yearning for love, is equal parts tragic as it is honest, raw, and vulnerable with insight into sub themes of self-harm and social pressures. Hot single ghosts (crying) in your area, a track about a crisis of identity and yearning to feel a sense of stability and support in their identity, is, again, heart wrenchingly poetic and seething.

Another strength of the album is some of the vocal performances included. With McCrimson experimenting with different vocal deliveries (Reverb, vocal layering, vocal modulations), their peak vocals can be found in the tracks vampire and nurse doom (despicable) for different reasons. In vampire, McCrimson offers a haunting vocal performance with some solid vocal progressions that are best exemplified during the verses especially. The lack of evasive voice modulations here allows McCrimson to let their vocals shine through for the listener to be able to appreciate the natural and undisturbed talents of McCrimson. On the flip side, nurse doom (despicable) offers voice modulations on McCrimson’s vocals that are iridescent to that of Dead Man’s Bones with a subtle yet haunting performance. If McCrimson were to use these tracks’ vocal signatures and delivery as guidance to exploring their sound more in future projects, there is an advance of untapped potential to be found.

Moving on to some of the critiques, firstly need to address some of the mixing. Some of the tracks within the project have instrumentals that are of noticeably low quality that are sometimes layered on top of other low quality instrumentals that make for the instrumentation to be a bit too cluttered and hard to appreciate. Understandably, having low quality sounding instrumentation is expected for an Indie artist starting off and is something that is sometimes out of their control; maybe enlisting the assistance of a mixer, investing in some better equipment, or, if instrumental samples are used, find a more reliable site with some better quality instrumentation available. Songs like lullaby for freaks, for example, has a solid xylophone intro with some dark and dreary strings and then begins to clash with the violins and the piano. The track begins to feel as if there is too much going on, rendering it to be a chaotic and messy listen at times. Sometimes with instrumentation, when it comes to layering, less is more and quality over quantity.

Aside from the clashing and quality, some of the instrumentals’ volume is played so low, it almost is nonexistent in the track, such as in hot single ghosts (dying) in your area. Might be more of a creative critique that falls under mixing but, some of the vocal layering is, at times, messy and a bit unnecessary. Tracks such as poppers finds McCrimson offering a solid vocal performance until the chorus when they layer yelling vocals and McCrimson harmonizing on top of the primary vocals which leads to the track to clash a bit and takes away from the otherwise lovely primary vocals.

Vocally, as aforementioned, there are some solid vocal moments within the album but, on the flip side, some room for improvements. Some of the tracks in which McCrimson attempts to hit some high notes and/or delivery a screaming-esuqe delivery, the vocals have a “blown out speaker” type of sound, such as in the track hot single ghosts (dying) in your area. Less of an issue with the performance and, again, more with equipment, this sounds as if an adjustment of the microphone used, the layout of the recording room, or some combination of the two would benefit the quality of the tracks.

In terms of cohesiveness, some tracks thematically don’t align as well with the rest and detract slightly. Child killers, for example, offer some commentary about mass shootings (At schools), lack of accountability nationally, and an odd societal acceptance of this continually happening. The track then switches to the perspective of a trans’ person receiving criticism about wanting to be a cop and McCrimson offering their opinions on why that doesn’t make sense as a trans’ person. The perspective of their being a conflict of a trans’ person wanting to be a cop and receiving criticism, from someone also trans, about the why’s and how’s they can do that is fresh, unique, and full of lyrical possibility. The two concepts, though, don’t blend well and, in terms of a cohesive feel to the other tracks, exploring the perspective of being trans and wanting to be a police officer is more cohesive to the album. While child killers is the best example of that lyrical choppiness, there are little inconsistencies sprinkled throughout that detract the otherwise cohesive feel of the project.

Rating/Mediocre – Ghosts shows so much promise with lyricism and themes of feeling alone, uncertain, and internally restless with poetic writing about tragedy, love, longing, and identity. With some glimmers of promise with satisfying vocals, good style, and good use of voice modulations, there are tracks such as vampire and nurse doom (despicable) that are close for the mainstream public. Unfortunately, these strengths sometimes are overshadowed by some uninformed mixing, low quality instrumentation, questionable layering, and an overall incoherent feel. With such promising songwriting, vocals, and an ear to experiment with sounds, there is so much talent within McCrimson that just needs to be more finely tuned with better equipment, more focus, and improved mixing.  

[We rank singles, EPs, and albums on a scale of Poor, Mediocre, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding]