This record started with a simple idea: What if houses had memories? What if, when we lived in them, our stories bled into the walls and became a part of the house? What if our ghosts were always going to haunt the places we've lived, along with everyone else who's lived there? So some songs are from the point of view people still living their lives in one of these houses; some are from the point of view of those dead and gone, watching over the living or haunting them; some are from people visiting home, after being away for along time, and the familiar ghosts of childhood all coming back to remind you of the way things used to be.
All of the songs are short stories; even if again and again the narrator's voice is transmitted to the instruments, the piano, the guitars, an accordion. And in comparison to the very song-orientated debut by Electric President - 24-year-old Ben Cooper's alter ego (Radical Face) and second musical affair of the heart, »Ghost«, has become a songwriter-album. Or rather a song-writing album, the tracks as carefully arranged interiors, chamber folk, pocket symphonies, passionate melodies.
Ben Cooper recorded this album almost entirely alone. In a small shed in Jacksonville Beach/Florida. His recording studio. Another one of these houses full of stories. He recorded the guitars and drum-patterns, the banjos, organs and keyboards and sang in chorus with himself. He let the instruments take a deep breath and created a breathing record, a lively, warm ghost.
»Welcome Home« is an epic miniature, a radio play to some extent. Banjo, glockenspiel, children's voices, a toy drum maybe. »Wrapped In Piano Strings« begins with a soft and light guitar, a murmur is blown over and rises to a hymnal crest: »I saw your father in the hall; his ghost is living in the wall.« "»Homesick« finally is an almost melancholic farewell, Cooper's guitar, his direct, flattering voice, reduced and condensed.
