No Ghostless Place

On No Ghostless Place, the second full length effort from London, Ontario’s Raised By Swans, Eric Howden sings about the departure of a love he was never meant to lose, the loss of a youth he never noticed was slipping away, and the struggle to hold onto the only things he has left; lingering memories of everything that’s gone. No Ghostless Place isn’t about the kind of ghosts that wear white sheets, and it’s set somewhere far more haunted than the house at the top of the hill; inside the mind of a brokenhearted poet. Sorrow-laden guitar and piano mingle with ethereal vocal melodies, heightening the fatalistic regret in “Secret Garden /S.C.”, “Easier”, and “Old Fires”, while steady purposeful drums provide an edge that keep things from getting too airy. On “Night Fighter”, well-known songs from the past become distant hums, “and you and I will fall too,” mourns Howden, deciding that all that can be done is “sleep… sleep… sleep… sleep.”