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Review: Scott Kelly and the Road Home - The Forgiven Ghost in Me [Album]

Neurot Recordings // "This album is like one long never ending journey, slowly plodding along a beaten path on an over clouded day"

by Josie, August 14th, 2012 and has been Read 659 times.
Last Edited by: Ffion Davies August 15th, 2012.

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A journey can be an exciting time, travelling from one place to another, the beginning of an adventure or to somewhere new perhaps. A journey can also be a long and difficult process of personal discovery and development. Such a voyage can be triggered by the world around us, from a major social event to the highs and lows of a movie, or even the climactic few seconds of a song or album.

Having been the guitarist and vocalist for post-metal band Neurosis, Scott Kelly has turned his hand to a solo album. As suggested bythe bands name, Scott Kelly and the Road Home’s new album The Forgiven Ghost in Me is supposed to do just that and dig deep into vocalist Kelly’s personal territories, embarking on a soul searching journey of desolation and despair.

Opening the album is ‘A Spirit Redeemed to the Sun’, offering the deep chords of an acoustic guitar which are briefly transformed into a light, yet slow solo, accompanied by Kelly’s deep, gravelly, southen drawl vocals. The opening few seconds of this track literally define The Forgiven Ghost in Me: with each track starting with a slow, deep chord,the slow appearance of Scott Kelly’s deep and almost depressing vocals and the odd harmony, all rounded off finally to a slow, echoing finish. Tracks like ‘The Sun is Dreaming in the Soul’ and ‘Within it Blood’ do not differ from this long and despairing formula, but is broken by ‘The Field That Surrounds Me’, if only for a moment by the use of some barely audible synth.

This Hank Williams/Jonny Cash-esc album is like one long never ending journey, slowly plodding along a beaten path on an over clouded day, feet aching, stepping one in front of the other, but getting nowhere.

It is simply one man and one low strung acoustic guitar that churns out the same twanging melody throughout all eight tracks, that quickly becomes hard to distinguish when one song ends and another begins.

Some journeys we never want to end, this one seems to take forever to reach its destination, taking a long, painstaking path en route.

The Forgiven Ghost in Me is released 14^thAugust on Neurot Recordings.