EXTENDED PLAY FOR MY SWEET MARY THYME

An excellent follow-up to their debut, Extended Play For My Sweet Mary Thyme is a nautical-themed song cycle. Opening and closing with the sound of waves, the album can be seen as an endless loop---this is reflected in the lyrics. Meditations on love and loss fill the tracks, with both opening track "And We Are Already At Sea" and the following track, "Ada, Age of Eight" contemplating the passage from life to death, and how that transition affects those left behind. "The Bosun's Lament" depicts a crew of doomed sailors, who seem to sail for eternity without ever reaching their destination. The closing two tracks, "For My Sweet Mary Thyme," and "Seaward," are both moody and epic instrumentals, their musical passages echoing the themes of the previous tracks. Throughout the record, Ghostbound play up contrasts, with frenetic tremolo-picked arpeggios giving way to smooth swells of chorused chords; gentle, finger-picked passages are slammed against walls of thundering distortion; black-metal blast beats walk incongruously arm-in-arm with laid-back jazz grooves on the kit. Nevertheless, while the first album had an occasionally piecemeal quality (inevitably due to its basis as a solo project by singer-songwriter Alec Head), this EP shows the work of a full band who have gelled their talents into a satisfying whole. Even the most idiosyncratic turns of the arrangements all eventually show an inner logic that helps to nestle them together like the carefully-crafted puzzle pieces they are.

Like the purgatorial mariners of "The Bosun's Lament," the moment the waves fade at the end of the last track, you may find yourself compelled to return again to the start of your journey.