Dead Ghosts
Love and Death and All the Rest (Burger)

Dead Ghosts has been one of Vancouver’s most prominent torchbearers for PBR–spiked, lo-fi garage rock for years. The four-piece makes no bones about its affinity for guitar licks that chime as much as twang, and distortion buzz as warm and wild as a honeybee’s. That lives on with Dead Ghosts’ latest, Love and Death and All the Rest.

While the album bears a decidedly more mature title than, say, the band’s first release, 1000 Joints, it contains no evidence that Dead Ghosts has subjected itself to all that pesky growing-up business.

And in this case, that might be for the best. Love and Death and All the Rest’s raw, psychotropic vibe is the perfect soundtrack for juvenile delinquency, beach-bum boredom, and casual mind-alteration. After all, as frontman Bryan Nicol rasps in the breeze-blown “Drink It Dry”, “You’re born to lose your mind.”

That being said, Dead Ghosts’ third full-length is a step forward for the band’s stubborn sound, built upon a foundation laid by the Seeds and the Keggs and furthered by the scrappy, melodic punk of the Replacements and Black Lips. Tracks like “Living in My Mind” and “I Will Be Gone” show Dead Ghosts’ growing willingness to experiment with its formula, achieving more potent results.