Band: Abigail’s Ghost

CD Title: “Selling Insincerity”

Label: Aesperus Music - Independent Release

Release Date: 2007

I recently wrote about bands that skirt the fringe of traditional progressive rock proper in a category commonly referred to as Alt-prog. Well here’s a band that’s actually in between those two categories. They’re called Abigail’s Ghost and their first official CD is out called Selling Insincerity. This five-piece with a traditional line-up of keyboards, bass, two guitars and drums hails out of Louisiana and this full-length CD is a follow-up to a couple of CD-EP’s released earlier this year.

Selling Insincerity features 11 tracks with the longest being 7:45 and the shortest being 1:05. Most of their material hovers in the 5-minute range. Abigail’s Ghost’s music places the guitar pretty much up front with the keyboards providing some tremendous supporting roles. So in no way are the keyboards invisible but the thing the ear remembers after listening are the guitars, be they crunchy heavy metal, stinging lead lines or acoustic strumming. Stylistically if you enjoy bands like Porcupine Tree, which I do, you are going to LOVEAbigail’s Ghost, which again, I do. These guys have a finely crafted sense of song-writing and it shows in their work. The songs are all driven by solid melodies, with great vocals and harmonies. The instrumental sections churn the rhythm for a while, then stop to emphasize a song section with blistering guitar, only to fade into the background while the vocals cover the next portion of the song. Repeating melodies win every time here. But it all hangs together because the songs stop and shift gears in a heartbeat when least expected. This is what stirs up the section of the brain known as Boca’s area. Boca loves the unpredictable and there’s plenty of that in the music of Abigail’s Ghost. Even in a short song like Sellout (4:19) where we go from full-on crunch to ethereal spacey-ness within a song talking about selling your soul to be in the spotlight. Much of their music has a dark, edginess to it. Brilliant stuff.

Without putting too fine a point on it, Abigails Ghost has a very modern prog sound that will remind many of the afore mentioned Porcupine tree, in the vocals, the guitar sounds and some of the compositional style. And I mean that in the most positive manner possible. These guys know their stuff and do manage to write some very classy and catchy songs. They do have their own sound. And it’s a sound that I know will appeal to a broad cross-section of prog music fans. And I’m one of them. Selling Insincerity will be spending a long time on my CD players. Great job!