Full Album Premiere & Review: All Souls, Ghosts Among Us
[Click play above to stream Ghosts Among Us by All Souls in its entirety. Album is out Oct. 21 on Oscura Records.]
The second 2022 release from Los Angeles heavy rockers All Souls is Ghosts Among Us. It is their third full-length behind 2020’s nothing-if-not-well-timed Songs for the End of the World (review here) and 2018’s self-titled debut (review here), and follows behind the summer’s Live From Total Annihilation (review here) split with Fatso Jetson, which captured the audio from 2021’s ‘Virtual Volumes’ livestream (review here). It has the further distinction of being the only All Souls outing to-date to be recorded as the trio of founding members Antonio Aguilar (guitar/vocals), Meg Castellanos (bass/backing vocals) — both formerly of Totimoshi — and drummer Tony Tornay, also of the aforementioned Fatso Jetson. In the interim since Ghosts Among Us was put to tape, also at Total Annihilation Studios, Alice Austin (vocalist for Black Sabbitch) has been handling guitar/backing vocal duties.
It is also the first All Souls studio album not to be recorded by Toshi Kasai (Melvins, et al), and finds the band instead working in close collaboration with producer Alain Johannes (Eleven, Queens of the Stone Age, on and on), who contributes guitar, backing vocals and keys throughout, fleshing out arrangements that, if nothing else, argue for the continued existence of All Souls as a double-guitar band. Something would be missing from these songs live with just three people, and despite Johannes not actually being ‘in’ the group, his presence throughout is vital, whether it’s backing the hook of opener “I Dream” or capturing sonic details like the layer of hard strum in the apex of the penultimate “Crawl” or the lead lines that course so fluidly over the winding noise rock-esque finish of “Roam.” As much as All Souls are recognizable in these songs — and they are; this is an All Souls album, to be sure — even down to the performances delivered by Castellanos, Tornay and Aguilar, the producer’s role is not to be understated.
Throughout their now-going-on-five-years tenure — and it was true of Totimoshi as well — All Souls are a band in between styles. While from the crunch of the very first riff that announces the beginning of “I Dream,” there’s no doubt that Ghosts Among Us is a heavy rock record, the angle of approach All Souls take to get there is their own. Drawing from ’90s emo, even a bit of goth maybe, noise rock via Helmet and Melvins, and Aguilar and Castellanos‘ own background in Latin American folk traditions and melodies, they are unto themselves in terms of sound, and even as Johannes brings familiar flourish to the nine songs/39 minutes of the outing, the mellow-dream-int0-frantic-nightmare of “Poison the Well” and the casual sweep of later surge of “Marjorie” — a preface for closer “Absquatulate” down on side B — and the head-side-to-side sway of centerpiece “Who Holds the Answer” are definitively All Souls. That Ghosts Among Us realizes this in a different way than if, say, Toshi Kasai had produced the record, does not make it any less true. I don’t know how much of pandemic lockdown they spent hammering out this material, but the album sounds like they went into the studio knowing what they wanted to have on the other end of the process.
The matter of identity is a big part of what makes Ghosts Among Us such an effective and engaging listen. If you’ve followed All Souls to this point, there will be much familiar in “I Dream” or “Crawl” in the tension of the verses and inevitable corresponding release of the chorus, but it’s the manner from which these structures are built outward that distinguishes the collection — and so, if you’ve not yet been introduced, there’s no lack of welcome to be found. Perhaps the most complex piece is the two-parter “The Grind/Free,” which has a clear-cut division at four minutes into its total 6:30, perhaps taking a piece of what would’ve been another entire song and melding it into the earlier work-day progression, providing the chorus’ release without actually following the verse in a clever twist to the plot. But even this is accessible when the listener approaches with an open mind as regards style and lets All Souls be who they are without trying to shoehorn them into one niche or another.
Because that is the only way to lose with this record. If you sit and hear a song like “The Grind/Free” and try to place it in this or that microgenre — maybe it’s post-rock for that pretty guitar noodling, but that bassline is straight doom lumber — by the time you’ve finished, the track is over and you’ve missed it. Yes, that makes Ghosts Among Us a hoot for repeat listens, and if that’s how you want to go, fine, but at least once, hear it just to hear it. For an act who don’t spend six months out of every year touring — they do get out when the getting’s good — their chemistry is a lock between Aguilar and Castellanos‘ literal decades of playing together and Tornay‘s well-established unfuckwithability on drums, and the fact that you have Johannes enhancing all of that as a producer, bringing out the best from the band, makes Ghosts Among Us the most accomplished All Souls offering to-date. Whether it’s the brief build-into-surge of “Key to Your Heart” or the nonlyric vocal line that helps “Absquatulate” cap with such verve, this material is worth meeting and appreciating on its own wavelength.
Not everyone’s going to do that, and for some listeners, the inability to divorce themselves from a ‘riffs do this’ mindset is a hindrance, and it may be that All Souls are destined for undervalued status for the duration. What’s the matter, grown up emotive heavy punk with proggy flourish isn’t your thing? Too specific? Fine. What matters so, so much more is the heart and the sincerity that All Souls put into everything they do, including these nine tracks. And in the case of Ghosts Among Us, the partnership they forge with Johannes as producer and player brings them simply to another level of refinement and aural detail. Let your guard down and you’ll be taken care of. There’s kindness in these songs if you’re willing to let them be kind. My suggestion is you do that. Their next full-length will no doubt offer something different, given the changes in lineup, the band’s return to four-piece status, etc., but Ghosts Among Us is a special moment for All Souls in terms of manifesting the possible from within their craft. It’s loud, can be quiet, can be dark, can be sad or triumphant, chaotic or controlled. It feels a bit like real life.
Will definitely give this some time.
All Souls still trigger in me the thought that “it’s not really my kind of thing but… hang about, this lot are great!”