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Music review: “Bad Ghost” by E.W. Harris 

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Released on July 10th 2021

EW Harris is a unique musical phenomenon. Originally from Athens Georgia, his musical styles have progressed in parallel with his move to Brooklyn, New York City where he produces and performs as a soloist, with a band The Sky Captains of Industry and in a duo, Caves and Clouds with Jo Kroger– all linked around New York’s  Big City Folk Collective . He has released six solo albums, an EP and a single (Caves and Clouds) as well as an active Patreon webpage and in these Covidian days, live webcasts to a world that has welcomed him as a guest in folk clubs, bars, poetry clubs and science fiction conventions.

EW also inhabits another world, in which “Rocket City” exists in a post-apocalyptic dystopian landscape populated by robots, homunculi , humans (“just a soul caught up in a piece of meat”) and characters from science fiction. It from is this world that “Bad Ghost” has emerged.

As EW says: “This is the story of a character who, in the post-apocalyptic future, accidentally acquires a secondary soul, is killed, and after death feels very guilty about the whole thing……..I unabashedly admit that this song was totally inspired by the issues surrounding Jadzia Dax from Star Trek: Deep Space 9…..”.

To quote Wikipedia: “Jadzia Dax is a joined Trill. Though she appears to be a young woman, Jadzia lives in symbiosis with a long-lived creature, known as a symbiont, named Dax. The two share a single, conscious mind, and her personality is a blending of the characteristics of both the host and the symbiont. As such, Jadzia has access to all the skills and memories of the symbiont's seven previous hosts.”

Knowing all this helps understand the song, but being a Star Trek fan is not a pre-requisite. As a song “Bad Ghost” is striking in its musical inventiveness and as a vehicle for EW’s voice.

“Bad Ghost” has travelled with EW for a few years now, usually performed in solo gigs, often with the support of effects driven from his iPad. It’s a favourite in EWs’ live and online setlists. EW’s live performances of this song appear on his “Alive and Undisclosed” album and numerous YouTube videos from his performances in Glasgow, Scotland and the USA. It’s a song that shows off EW’s incredible vocal skills, an astounding talent that arose from vocal training at his mother’s knee.

This incarnation of “Bad Ghost” sits within EW’s tradition of constantly transforming his songs (check out Homunculus and Homunculus IV on ewharris.bandcamp.com) and demonstrates his remarkable proficiency as a producer, songwriter, instrumentalist and singer. Anyone who has watched EW’s lockdown Facebook Live streams will recognize his curious collection of screens, keyboards, mysterious flashing lights and weird and wonderful effects that seem to appear from nowhere. This production, however, comes from veteran producer/engineers Kia Eshghi and Chris D.Butler for their brand new co-lable: Hanging Dilettante Records,   giving birth to a well-crafted and commercially viable single.

In "Bad Ghost" E.W. and the producers have taken what is already an inventively constructed song and added layers of rhythm and sonic variety which could easily have been fashioned by future producers with their ears set to twentieth century synthesized electronic effects. Yet the guitar and voice still stand out, and the song is a success in its own right.

Listening on good sound equipment exposes the range of sonic arts in this production; from gut-curdling bass notes to tinkling doorbell arpeggio riffs; accompanied by marching snares and synths. There’s a heavily layered rocky middle section that is “…….one way to express the unresolved quality of conflicting emotions issuing from multiple parties”. It’s a production with its feet in subterranean caverns and its head in the stars.

Rising above the electronic wizardry, E.W.’s voice shines out, though at times it’s acquiescent to other elements of the soundworld as it retreats into ghostly landscapes. This is a great, well-constructed song with strong melody and lyrics that has emerged from E.W. as a viable single with its place in the 21^st century.

I’ve been a bad host, I was a weak man, Now I’m a bad ghost

Eric Hathaway

EarthSouNZ.com