SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: ZERO 7 – YEAH GHOST (BONUS EDITION)

Zero 7
Yeah Ghost (Bonus Edition)
New State Music

Zero 7’s Sam Hardaker and Henry Binns had real problems when they parted ways with Sia, their ‘unofficial lead singer,’ after her 2008 album Some People Have Real Problems. Despite nominations for a Grammy Award and the UK’s prestigious Mercury Prize, the London downtempo duo worried their music would be forever relegated to soundtracking bourgeois TV cooking shows. Consequently, their fourth album, 2009’s Yeah Ghost, traded nuance and restraint for sounds piped in to American casual restaurant chains full of noshing youth. They further reckoned half an album of aspirant contemporary pop and half an album of challenging electronica equaled one new direction, but Yeah Ghost is all over the place.

Turns out the pop songs are more challenging than the experiments. With an excess of vocalist Eska’s upbeat style, “Mr McGee” drops like a submarine crushing the hopes of fans longing for Sia. Zero 7 out-excess themselves on “Swing” and “Pop Art Blue,” incorporating every idle instrument languishing in the studio, including flute, trombone, xylophone, marimba, steel drums, and—banjo? In a play for the kids, Eska’s myriad vocal embellishments on neo-soul/trap single “Medicine Man” compete to be more grating than the clangy, death-laser synths. A Mercury Prize nominee herself, Eska’s redemption is her gospel blues meditation on “The Road” and saving the beat-driven Outkast outcast, “Sleeper.”

Though he wasn’t officially part of the project, producer Nigel Godrich is the true ghost looming in the Radiohead-y atmospherics of the more experimental tracks. For the abstract dub of “Ghost sYMbOL,” Binki Shapiro’s voice is pitch shifted and multi-tracked beyond recognition, a space age love song centerpiece. “Everything Up (Zizou)” isn’t Beck’s “Think I’m in Love” (produced by Godrich!) in disguise, but it was inspired by French footballer Zinedine “Zizou” Zidane. Sung by Binns himself, it is a bonafide departure packed with unexpected lyrical turns like Zizou’s signature move: “Spot the difference if you can, yes we can, imagine if we can.”

Spotting the difference between “Ghost sYMbOL” and its unreleased “Kling version” on the 2022 reissue is far more difficult, however. The CD edition also includes forgettable instrumental “E Sgwers (Demo)” and the previously digital-only “Methods.” The impetus for the 2022 reissue, though, is its double- 180g heavyweight, first-ever pressing on vinyl.

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