Fever The Ghost

Very little music is universally appreciated, but some artists are a more acquired taste than others. Fever The Ghost is at the very periphery of that scale. Many people may not even recognize the tracks on Zirconium Meconium as songs, but the people with an ear for this sort of thing are going to go absolutely apeshit for it.

Those people might be Frank Zappa fans, sorely underserved by the music industry since 1974. If you count Uncle Meat and Roxy & Elsewhere as Mother of Invention high-water marks, meet Fever The Ghost. Those folks might be Julian Cope fans who feel abandoned by the Drude’s late-career turn to doom rock. Do you love the stylistic range of Peggy Suicide and the pop-hook rush of 20 Mothers? Has Fever The Ghost got an album for you.

Maybe all this is pouring it on a bit thick but Fever The Ghost are peculiar. They’re completely into their own trip, distorted voices and obtuse instrumentation on what would, in different hands, be pop anthems. They almost write a hit in spite of themselves with the ebullient “1518”—it’s Nile Rodgers and Chic by way of H.R. Pufnstuf, an absurd melange of funky guitar and chimes with silly layered falsetto vocals. Later, “Equal Pedestrian” flirts with Cameo and early Prince; “Sun Moth” feels like how early ’70s psychedelic stuff would feel if it sounded as great as it’s remembered—it’s a rollicking, repetitive, irresistible thing.

Aside from kick ass, what bands like Wand, Foxygen, and Fever The Ghost do is pull bits and pieces from disparate and otherwise unrelated influences and put them through the whacked-out filter of their band aesthetic, synthesizing the whole mess into something unexpected and new. Zirconium Meconium is ridiculous, flitting from idea to idea, faster than you can catch on one listen. 

Look, Fever The Ghost is not something you’ll fully understand by reading an article. Go to a record shop and gaze at the cover. That hideous/cute extraterrestrial caterpillar with the balloons might as well be the lead singer. Ask them to play it and watch the reactions of the other shoppers. There will be horror, there will be confusion, there will be delight. Let where you fall in that spectrum drive your purchase. »

– Eric Evans

Fever The Ghost plays November 15 at Bunk Bar