Ben Vida takes no time in showcasing just how his music has evolved since the release of Green Inferno. When "Field on Water" begins, the skipping rhythms and tightly structured melodies come as a pleasant shock and as evidence that even the most obscure musical techniques can facilitate a beauty anyone can appreciate.
Kranky
Green Inferno was a thick, warm album that swelled and pulsed with all the life of a Florida summer. There were melodies, vocals, and rhythms congregating with swells and synthetic washes; the mixture of earthy textures and incorporeal suggestion was soothing, if just a little offbeat. Lightning Ghost begins with an emphasis on the phenomenal and tangible world, doing away with or deemphasizing the elysian connotations that covered Vida's previous work as Bird Show in the form of drone-like features. Vida's voice stands out on this record, having a more prominent position in the music, but the music itself has changed and many of these songs deserve to be called catchy, among other things. Ben works his magic on Lightning Ghost by emphasizing tribal grooves and simple rhythms, casting them as the gravity around which the rest of the album will flow. The material around that gravitational center is composed of many different sounds, not the least of which is a psychedelic continuity of beating guitars and melodic percussion. Nothing on Green Inferno sounds like this does, but the shift makes sense; there were hints that Vida was capable of something like this in everything he's done.
So the album is different, but that says nothing about how good it is. I said the songs were catchy and that's absolutely true. I want to listen to this album in my car just as much as I want to listen to it in a reclining chair with a nice pair of headphones. The rhythms cruise lazily, but with an insistent pulse and the guitars and keyboard parts interact and tangle together in some very appealing ways; the title track is an especially good example of Vida's tendency to mash all his instrumentation together. The album isn't soupy, but it's carefully arranged so that each sound compliments the next, furthering the organic qualities that the album already has. Vida's misty production also lends its hand in giving the record a naturalistic sound. As each song progresses it works its way deeper into my consciousness not just because it's got something like a hook here and there, but because it belongs there, fits there like it was missing from the start.
There may be some strange instrumentation here, but the music isultimately very approachable. Before, Ben might've alienated somepeople by abstaining from more conventional song structures andsticking to rather abstract work, but now he is welcoming thosestructures into his music and putting them to good use. They don'tdominate the album, but they add to the mystique of Vida's alreadythrobbing and shrouded music. I think this may earn Vida some new fansand I don't think it's too big of a stretch to imagine a record likethis being a gateway to stranger music for people who've never reallyexplored new and different styles. Ben Vida has created a sound all hisown, but kept much of the music familiar enough to be inviting.
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