Monsoon’s Ghost Party Celebrates Isolation, Transformation, & Reconnection.

By: August Spencer

In 2015, Monsoon made a massive hit with their album “Ride a Rolla”, a fast surf-rock record that brought out all the best thrashing guitar tones an old Kaiju movie or new punk could ask for. In rapid succession, the title-track of the album not only got picked up for a Toyota Corolla commercial, it went on to feature as part of the 2016 Super Bowl ad line-up. Monsoon went from basement sets to a prime-time television spot airing mere moments after the half-time show.

Ghost Party, Monsoon’s sophomore release, departs from the thrashing to deliver a joyous, polished, masterfully layered record that still holds every bit of the raucous energy Monsoon is so well known for. It’s a monument to connections that were years in the making. After taking a sabbatical from music, Sienna Chandler (guitar/vocals) has reconnected with Joey Kegel (drums) and Roan O’Reilly (bass guitar) for a triumphant return in a sonically matured, wholly cohesive second album.

Over a multiple-year release schedule, Monsoon has dropped single after single into the streaming ether, making noticeable waves every time. Beyond sheer talent, Monsoon has a real knack for music videos: part story-telling, part visualizer, their videos for “Dark Colossus”, “Don’t Move”, “O Brother”, and “Third Voice” have been welcome explosions of scene-setting vibrant joy. Moreover, by leaving each song to stand on their own for long periods, it’s allowed listeners to take them in as individual creations while still slowly building their forthcoming project’s larger context. It’s only fair to take this album on in the same way, song-by-song, sitting with each piece of the experience to feel out how the parts elevate the whole.

“Walking Legs”

This often-haunting record begins with the spirit of the album; soft-plodding marimba footsteps underpinning an inability to move on. At 0:36 the chorus breaks through the walls, its long loping guitar-plucked steps searching through candle-lit hallways of sound until bringing the face of the melody right up against a crescendo of truth: memories always catch up. This first episode ends in static.

“Third Voice“

Sienna’s brilliant staccato intonation evokes rain falling with fast sharp drops, clarifying the spots they strike, she is chimes in a storm, ringing clear in the downpour at 1:40. Roan O’Reilly perfectly embodies the tone-shifting performance of “Third Voice” in the photo used for the single release: his blonde-wig and dress accompany a bassline that creeps around a stage curtain, a performed personality not being as grounding as other foundational things lost to the past. The guitar fuzz laments this emotion along with the chorus: “you don’t look like you and your favorite things have changed / and I wish I could rewind and change some things.” Joey echoes a drumstick on his kit’s rim as our hearts are eaten slowly through the outro.

“Ghost Party”

There’s a spider walking the guitar picking-pattern here, like a web of memories to be trapped in. Opening bassline under skin, thrumming, anxious for an apothecary’s concoction to treat this want. Monsoon delivers this in its cordial invitation that addresses the present absence of a best friend who isn’t around anymore. Broken bones and a howling guitar bring “Ghost Party” to its scene-shifting midpoint. At the two-minute mark the cackling witch sisters of a chorus section know what eyes and wings they put in the song’s brew (a dash of St. Vincent’s “Now Now”, a thematic foot-petal stomping of a stitched-together nostalgia set stumbling around another evening), and in the roiling conclusion the old details bubble up a bit more vividly. “Ghost Party” is the moment when a good movie says the title of the movie and someone in the audience points at the screen and says “that’s Ghost Party.”

“Don’t Move“

“Don’t Move” oozes a vibrant ghoulish houseparty charm from start to finish. To numerically mark this review outside a strict calendar date, “Don’t Move” has 39,816 listens at time of publishing. Quantifying a track doesn’t always imply quality, but when a ridiculously replayable song gets the love it deserves, why complain? “Don’t Move” is the best possible earworm. Of the numerous sonic linchpins in this cohesive album experience, “Don’t Move” stands tall among them, sticking to a brain with the saccharine delivery of its opening line: “Beetlebee, you know the muscle eats the brain sometimes”. Fine-tuning every vowel over years, it’s a testament to talent and craft to make something so tirelessly replayable.

“O Brother“

The most refreshingly upbeat song about getting buried in a hole. The breakaways inspire an impish impulse to kick some shit with a grin the size and shape of an Adidas flip-flop heel. 2:24, “brother, tAKE MY HAND” *glass shatters*. Joey and Sienna are pure chemistry, gloved domestic love sealed with a collar and an album cover.

“Dark Colossus“

There’s a real art to the minute long interlude track. Often it’s done, and done well, with samples of other work, blown-out clippings of Turner Classics, or MF Doom samples, or static-filled Kaiju screams, the usual suspects. “I’ve got some kind of poem on you, on you” gives the key to the allusion. This Colossus is dark because Sienna is sitting with Sylvia Plath in the nights, squat[ting] in the cornucopia / of your left ear. The atmospheric television static of this song’s sound broadcasts themes of monumental, formative connections she now sits in the shadow of. This time though, the sun rises under the pillar of Chandler’s tongue.

“Submission“

Trance-like guitar work curls steadily upwards from Monsoon’s hypnotic burning-incense rhythm on “Submission”. Ghostly vocalizations are one of the album’s leitmotifs and are played here to beautiful effect. 

“Nightshop“

“Nightshop” has such an ecstatic upper register, Sienna so evidently has an absolute blast in taking her voice to those deceptively-off-the-cuff heights the song so often reaches. Alright and somebody’s gotta say it: the spelling-out of the song title is the spiritual successor to Puffy Ami Yumi’s intro song for Teen Titans. This is music to defend or destroy a city to.

“Red Blood“

The bassline issues a stance-change as Monsoon now calls for blood. Darker, sanguine, and breathless, Dick Dale and his Del-Tones attend a nightmare highschool at the one minute mark as the surf rocks on. Candles burn brighter with ritual as Sienna chants a heavier late-album track to its bewitched cheerleader conclusion.

“Pigpen“

Sienna primes the necks of the crowd in the first 30 seconds, giving an immediate ramping of vocal energy that sets up the true head-banging to come. Monsoon has a masterful grasp of tension-and-release that make the payoffs feel so well earned. Joey punches through brilliantly in the front half of “Pigpen” with his cathartic rapid-fire percussion, his timing perfectly attuned to their full-band drop-ins, bringing a totality of sound crashing together in synch with a prepared audience. I can feel the late-set sweat of the back-half of this song. Crushed in the swaying; exuberance in exhaustion. 2:21, I’m collecting myself and setting my crushed PBR on the corner of the Radio Room stage to eventually grab at the end of the set instead of further slopping it onto every shirt (including my own) in a five-foot radius. ‘Pigpen” builds to a collective breath, leaves an audience happily penned in by the sound.

“Beetlebee“

“Beetlebee” is the show-stopper culmination of every symbol and phrase utilized to such great effect in each song and scene set across the album, it’s a series of Checkov’s guns firing off in “Beetlebee” unison in this final act, a last inning of 90mph refrains lobbed during a “battle with Death at a baseball game”. Monsoon commits to their signature wall of sound, using their namesake to wash the world away. With a chorus section that packs in the strength of collective support and a hard-swinging drumline, Monsoon manages to break The Reaper’s chessboard, if only for a moment.

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Ghost Party is a retrospective on old connections that imparts enough momentum to go back into the world and make new ones, it’s a dance in the cemetery that shakes the grave off of sad bones, and it’s a hell of a release to start the year with. You can find Monsoon on Instagram their numerous well-crafted music videos on Youtube, and you can catch them live as they finish their album-release spring tour. They are bringing the celebration to Swanson’s Warehouse (Greenville S.C.) on April 23rd for the Rattlesnake Press Issue 4 release party (Read More Here), Petra’s in Charlotte, N.C., on the 28th, and The Pocket in Washington, D.C. on April 29th.