Album Review: The Acorn - No Ghost

As the first few bars of finger-picked acoustic guitar slide out of my speakers, I emit a sigh of defeat.  Immediately, I envision myself writing a review that relies far too heavily on Fleet Foxes comparisons; a review which contains an inordinate amount of ghastly words like “rustic” and, worse still, “harmonies”. Indeed, as No Ghost’s opening track ‘Cobbled From Dust’ kicks into rhythmic life about a minute in, the lead singer is joined by a few other voices in two soaring harmonies (there’s that word already) and The Acorn seem to announce themselves as yet another band dragging their heels down the path opened up by the astounding success of Fleet Foxes (unavoidable – honest!). However, almost at this very instant, squealing electric feedback kicks into the mix and begins to awaken the listener to the realisation that The Acorn have a little more spice than your average lukewarm Fleet Foxes emulators.

The first two tracks are perfect examples of one of The Acorn’s biggest strengths. From the opening gentle arrangement of finger picked acoustic guitars accompanied by sparingly used piano chords, the textures build and swell without making a big fuss about it – almost without the listener realising – until the mix encompasses thick layers of electric guitars providing exciting little one-off flourishes and pounding drums. Listen to the first thirty seconds of Restoration and then immediately skip to the final thirty seconds and compare the difference. The thing is, the progression is so organic as to be barely perceived while listening to the track all the way through.

This trick works not only within individual songs, but also throughout the course of the record as a whole. The snarling distortion of the disjointed ‘Crossed Wires’ doesn’t seem incongruous by the time it rolls around in the middle of the record and, furthermore, sits quite happily next door to what is possibly the album’s gentlest, down-tempo moment in ‘On The Line’.  The album doesn’t hiccup or feel unstructured despite its swings from minimalist acoustic arrangements to crunching electric guitars; the songs share a firm aural identity regardless of the shifting textures with the lead vocals organically morphing between the poles of whisper and projection as the music demands.

While we may have half-forgotten our friends Fleet Foxes while we’re hearing parts of the album, like the noisily stabbed chords during introduction to the album’s title track, The Acorn never let us fully dispel the comparisons. This leads us onto the chief weakness of the album: the band are far too disposed towards simply sustaining a huge note in three part harmony (there’s that word again) than they are to actually construct a memorable chorus. Ooohs and ahhhs are, to be sure, lovely enough but impressively projected, impressively held harmonies rarely result in a memorable hook; what Fleet Foxes employed during introductions or as throwaway flourishes, The Acorn employ as the crux of a chorus. For this reason, ‘Misplaced’ stands out as a definite highlight with its firmly defined and addictive skipping chorus of “I know, I know, I know.... I won’t be misplaced”; the syllabic structure of it being slightly altered each time in an interesting and nuanced way. The band is unable to create a chorus as firmly defined at any other point on the album.

However, No Ghost’s variation in texture and arrangement is more than enough to keep the interest of the listener (some of the disjointed interplay between the guitar and rhythm section being far more interesting than many similar artists) and, even when they flirt with being just-another-harmonies band, they certainly don’t do a bad job of it. I may have harped on about Fleet Foxes in every single paragraph and I may have used the word “harmonies” a fair few times but I have managed to refrain from using the word “rustic”. Credit goes to The Acorn for being entertaining enough to stop me from having to resort to that.