Damon and Naomi with Ghost is an exquisitely smooth mixture of acoustic guitars, an electric guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, and a harmonium, with a subtle under current of drums, providing for a consummate fusion of abstract folk and ethereal pop, with Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang's vocal combination at times rivaling the dreaminess of that of Kevin Shields and Belinda Butcher. The sonic of this album is infinitely expansive, a sound seeming to hover somewhere in Ghost's homeland on the rolling hills of Japan's mountains under a luminous summer moon. Krukowski and Yang sing as though they've just returned from a sojourn in an otherworldly realm, and burning with revelation find themselves unable to form into words what they've seen, and as a result use clearly defined but blurred imagery, specifically manifesting itself in lyrics such as "I looked behind a door / And saw a world that had disappeared long before / Hide my eyes from the light / And say the words I cannot understand," and "And no one can ever know what they see from there / Or what they feel before the end / Cause I'm in love with something I can't hold."
Besides the seven original songs on their fourth album, Damon and Naomi also do two brilliant covers, the first a glossier version of Big Star's "Blue Moon," and the second, Nico's version of "Eulogy to Lenny Bruce," which, depending on how attached one is to Nico's voice, you may love or hate.
Aside from the obvious practicality of the title labeling this record exactly what it is, a combined effort between Damon and Naomi and the Japanese experimental psychedelia band, Ghost, it also efficaciously describes their live show. As when they played in Minneapolis: Krukowski and Yang, cast in warm lights, sat and performed, while Michio Kurihara of Ghost, dressed in drab colours, stood in the shadows off to the side, and stared lifelessly at his feet — intently launching into psychedelic riffs, literally having an aura of a ghost.
