SBSR: The Ghost Wolves “In Ya Neck”

The Ghost Wolves “In Ya Neck”

Recently, I’ve been downloading and listening to music like crazy from Band Camp.   This is a review of a group of songs by the same band I got from Band Camp- usually it constitutes an EP.   This is a song-by-song review and it is never to exceed six songs.   At the end, I will tell you the “Recommended Downloading Level”, which means whether or not I think you should spend your time downloading these songs.   It’s on a scale from 1 to 5, 5 meaning that you should stop reading my review and download these songs immediately and 1 meaning that if you even think about downloading these songs your computer will be infected with a horrific bad music virus.   Enjoy.

<1> “Gonna Live” – This is some good old fashioned female singing honky tonk rock here, I tell ya.   It has male accompanying vocals now and for some reason the beat in the background reminds me of the Pretenders song “Back on the Chain Gang”.

<2> “Curl Up and Dye” – This opens with some beautiful distortion and then the female vocals just get belted out, more like Blondie or Joan Jett than the country/honky tonk vibe I was picking up in the song.   Male backing vocals are back.   Okay, this really awesome song just turned into a song about getting your hair done.   No, the musical quality didn’t deplete, it’s holding strong at a very high rating for me, but apparently the Curl Up and Dye is a salon and this song is about how she gets her hair done there and you should too.   “Go see Shamika at the Curl Up and Dye / I told her all about you / She expects you at about half past five” Yes those lines did just happen.  Wow.  This was such a good song for me until I listened to the words.   Such passion wasted.

<3> “Broke Joke” -- Let’s see if all the air is not deflated from my proverbial sails.   Okay, the male and female vocals are trading off on this fast paced song that stops after these little guitar riffs for them to spout out some line about NOT GETTING YOUR HAIR DONE.  At least this song has parts in it that mention love and other emotions and it isn’t about, you know, being too poor to shower or something. 

<4> “The Snake and Jake Shake” – Time to find out if this is about Jake Roberts or not.  Nope.  We trade off male and female vocals again in this sort of 1950’s era rock n roll song about a dance.  I kid you not.   True, Chubby Checker had The Twist, but The Twist this is not.

<5> “Big Star” – Kind of a slowed down version of the last song, only now it’s about daddy telling them they’re going to be big stars.

<6> “First Love” – This is a ballad with her just belting it out.  Possibly the breakout song on this EP (Is it an EP?)

                I’m giving these songs a half rating level because it’s not necessarily bad but it’s also just not for me.   Sure, there are parts I could see that could use improvement (Let’s try re-recording “Curl Up and Dye” with different lyrics), but someone else might find them appealing.

                When you download these six songs, you also get two bonus tracks at the end that are audio files of interviews.   That’s kind of interesting, as I don’t think I’ve seen a band do that before. 

Recommended Downloading Level:  2.5/5