Every few years a singer/songwriter type comes along from the underground and captures the hearts of many and makes the transition from being inexplicably unknown to some how being successful whilst retaining every scrap of credibility they started out with, Anthony Hegarty did it through sheer wierdness, Bon Iver/Justin Vernon did it via coming across like the most ordinary and likeable person in music, listening to D.M. Stith's debut album it's hard imagining the same not happening to Stith due to his jaw-dropping originality.
On first listen to Heavy Ghost the amazing attention to detail becomes apparent not just in the music but also the packaging, the production and the lyrics. Every song is given its own atmosphere and space, yet the album is the tied together with harrowing. ghostly layered backing vocals, trickling piano lines, improvised lead vocals recalling Anthony & The Johnstons debut, stumbling drunken rhythms and as Stith himself says 'a notion of being persued by something'. Stith takes you into his own dream world, it's been far too long since an album like this has so clearly displayed the artist's vision.
The album has it's own distinctive personality, which can probably be put down to Stith playing most of the music himself (with some fairly impressive cameos from Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond & Sufjan Stevens) whilst self-producing the album to mind blowing standards himself. This is goosebumps, hairs on the back of the neck stuff, reverb-drenched, astounding and beautiful.
9/10
Heavy Ghost is available on Asthmatic Kitty Records.
