Recall, if you can, your youthful days of high school. Remember the way you wasted away your life in homeroom, your sexual frustration during lunch break or when your parents just didn’t understand how you could be failing algebra for the second time. You remember don’t you? Remember how you kept a notebook of poetry and short stories that spilled out your teen angst in a poorly spelled inky mess instead of taking notes.
Now let me assure you that your musings were probably incredibly dull and shameful. At least this is my case. That is why I find “Young Fridays,” That Ghost’s debut release on Twosyllable Records, to be an exceptionally awesome album.
Elaboration time! That Ghost is actually 18-year-old Ryan Schmale who has already self-released three full-length albums. His fourth release, “Young Fridays,” explores all the shit you put up with in high school. Now, there are a lot of people out there who dismiss the album because they seem to think that his songs are distant, cold, lack musicianship and have an overall amateur sound. To that, I say, “No shit, Sherlock.” The kid is 18 and you are some snooty critic for some bullshit college radio station who hasn’t produced anything of value. That Ghost, on the other hand, surpasses those who he seems to imitate, building on his influences and reminding me of The Strokes if they didn’t really suck.
The first track, “When There’s No One Else To Sing To You Sing To Yourself,” is one of the best on the album and one of my favorites of the month. As he sings “If I ever had control of my life, than it’s gone tonight” in a way that reminds almost every KCPR DJ of the Parenthetical Girls, I can’t help but spastically wiggle my legs and limply nod my head (admittedly a standard dance move of mine) and feel justified for being incredibly lame and self-conscious.
His subject is often that of an external figure that he loves but can’t have for various reasons, which ranges from personal defects, such as the inconsistency of a teenage heart, to girls who just don’t like him that way. But instead of going to Taco Bell and gorging himself on Fully Loaded Nachos in an unattractively tight t-shirt, he gets drunk “to make sure that things don’t get too dull” in his song “Top Shelf” that drills it’s hooks right into your head.
The best part is that the album has just the right amount of emo, unlike my high school writing, which was over saturated with un-ironic self-pity and hyperbolic confessions that never succeeded in making girls think I was a good and sensitive man. Instead, his songs downplay his angst without bottling it up and highlights his ability to get back up and do a cool little dance in spite of it all. The kind of dance that he would like to do with you.