Ghostwoman - Hindsight is 50/50
Dine Alone Records
Released Nov 24th, 2023
With the release of their third album in two years, Ghost Woman is on a roll. Following their highly acclaimed 2022 self-titled debut, January of this year brought us the stripped down and haunted Anne, If, and riding this momentum Ghost Woman have emerged from the French countryside with their third album, Hindsight is 50/50. In interviews, lead guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Evan Uschenko has described this newest release as one that “finally captures the true nature of the band,” and this is likely due in no small part to the fact that it was recorded in a beautiful all-analog studio called Kerwax, located in the village of Loguivy-Plougras in Brittany, France.
After spending years on the road as a touring musician playing other people’s songs, the Alberta-based multi-instrumentalist decided to try his hand at writing some of his own, and from this creative flux Ghost Woman was born. Uschenko has been carving out his own take on tape saturated garage rock and indie psych since the smoldering 2021 EP Lost Echo’s, and it is a sound that has been perfected on stages in bars, clubs and festivals around the world.
Ghost Woman records exist within a kind of dualism: Uschenko insists it is not a solo project, but a band, despite the fact that the albums leading up to Hindsight were written, performed, recorded and produced entirely by him. The live shows— consisting of a shifting lineup, though only Uschenko and Ille van Dessel are credited on the Hindsight liner notes— push the music into a louder, harder-hitting zone. This resulted in a kind of violent translational movement, where the painstakingly crafted recordings Uschenko made on his Tascam 388 tape recorder were shot out of a canon by a five-piece rock band. But now, for the first time, Uschenko has brought on drummer and co-writer Ille van Dessel, and the duo were able to trackthe songs of Hindsight live in the studio direct to tape, bestowing a previously unattainable immediacy to the music.
Uschenko isn’t shy about wearing his influences on his sleeve, name-checking bands like Pavement, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Safe As Milk-era Captain Beefheart, and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. Less concerned with pushing the boundaries of genre, he is comfortably working within an established tradition of music. Hindsight is 50/50, like all Ghost Woman albums, isn’t re-inventing the wheel; rather, it is a beautifully rendered contribution to a beloved medium of art, made by someone who is deeply studied and obsessively articulate with the idiosyncrasies of the sound. It would be all too easy to get lost in the cresting wave of the garage rock revival, or be dragged under as that wave rolls back— after all, the whole point of garage was that it was easy to make, accessible to all, made by friends smashing shit together and drinking beer. But the reason Ghost Woman is able to rise above is through sheer dedication: to the songcraft, to the sonics, to that ineffable and all-important vibe.
Hindsight may not be especially outstanding, even within Ghost Woman’s own catalog, but it is more of a good thing. If you order a Reuben, you’d probably be pissed if someone handed you a grilled cheese, or a spoonful of caviar— well, Ghost Woman’s got the Reuben in spades, and they’ll be serving ‘em up all night long.
- Harman Burns
