Ghost Tropic

Songs: Ohia | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 14, 2000)
• Original Release Date: November 14, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Secretly Canadian
• ASIN: B0000508PO
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #268,745 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The second album released in 2000 from Songs:Ohia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dangerous, February 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Ghost Tropic (Audio CD)

Hello, four stars are cautiously awarded this album following profuse internal debate and deliberation. Plus some appropriate liquors. You can't go around throwing five cartoon stars at damn near everything; you've got to use them sparingly.

If you know Mr. Songs:Ohia, you've likely already had your shop beautifully wrecked by his mournful sounds. Perhaps you purposely seek such devistation, like me. Good job.

Ghost Tropic does something different than prior Songs:Ohia albums, in that it possesses a conceptual flow from beginning to end, which requires the listener to give their undivided attention throughout the course of the album (for maximum effect). There may not be as many 'hits' on this one, but Ghost Tropic's overall arc and aftermath can be near overwhelming, should your ears and heart yield to it's singular naked emotion. Therefore, be careful when listening.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meditative breath, April 16, 2001

By 

Dirk Hugo (Cape Town, South Africa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ghost Tropic (Audio CD)

Largely due to similar vocal phrasing and a foundation of sparse, organic instrumentation, comparisons between Songs:Ohia's Jason Molina and Will Oldham will inevitably abound. However, rather than provide a lo-fi homage to perverse maladjustment, Molina furnishes a technicolour portrait of the more ethereal territory of spiritual wanderlust and saddened backward glances. As a result, Ghost Tropic is a liberating musical experience - carrying all the weight of worldly woes yet still achieving an exhilirating level of emotional transcendence.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eerie, bleak & brilliant!, August 17, 2005

By 

Mr. R. A. Riggs "R_Riggs" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ghost Tropic (Audio CD)

This is one of the best albums that you have (probably) never heard! Well, that's if your favourite music emcompasses Talk Talk's "Spirit of Eden", Bonnie Prince Billy's "I See A Darkness" and Joy Division's "Closer" - because that's the kind of territory this record inhabits. Ghost Tropic really lives up to its name; the album is haunted, otherworldly and utterly desolate, creating entirely its own existential landscape from scratch with the help of Mike Mogis and Alisdair Roberts. "Simply to live/that is my plan" sings Jason Molina, accompanied by the most minimal guitar you have heard since Mark Hollis ditched his band because they 'played too many notes'. This record is dark, laying bare a spiritual isolation and emptiness which is rarely heard in any form of music. The album slowly evolves from acoustic beginnings to take in tropical environmental twitterings and creaky programmed percussion, ending with the final synth movement of Incantation, which sounds akin to Joy Division's "The Eternal" if it really did go on forever... Ghost Tropic is modern folk music that sounds like it has just crawled out of the swamp, completely unaware of conventions or anything that has gone before it. It's also a bit of an anomaly for Jason Molina, abandoning Songs:Ohia's (also brilliant) indie-rock/country modes that came before and after for a full-on atavistic descent into his personal darkness. He later revisited this sound, with slightly less success, on Pyramid Electric Co (again recorded with Mike Mogis). But here he did it best. Believe.