I'll Come Home When the Ghosts Are Gone
When it comes to ghostly folk music in Canada, 2009 has been a hallmark year, and Ottawa's Kirk Ramsay, widely known by his stage-name Giant Hand, has been an integral part of the success of this freaky sub-genre. His debut full-length album, called Coming Home, has gained recognition and deserved praise from all the right places, leaving Ramsay, with his apparition-of-Neil Young voice and his Timber Timbre tone, in a position to advance his young career as a singer-songwriter by leaps and bounds in the coming year.Â
Ramsay's beginnings as a songwriter are intriguing and unique, causing one to believe that this young man has some twisted-up feelings and thoughts which have until recently been bottled up inside his stomach with no avenue for escape or expression. Back in early 2008, Ramsay was deeply inspired by the music documentary called The Devil and Daniel Johnston. After seeing it, he went out into the city to buy his first guitar. He came home and began to teach himself how to play. Apparently after struggling to perfect covers of songs that have already been written, Ramsay simply learned several chords and began to write and play songs of his own creation. Thus Giant Hand was born, and one of Canada's most peculiar and fixating musicians began his work.Â
Giant Hand's debut LP has ten songs which, for the most part, rely on straight forward chord patterns behind dark vocal melodies that roll along as steadily as a Cross-Canadian freight train. Behind the musical arrangements, hazy sound effects such as the howling winds during "Catacombs" adds to the ghostly ambience of the album. These qualities, along with Ramsay's perpetually wavering vocals, create a context that is enticing in it's originality.  It's like his relative instrumental experience has combined with his innate artistry to create an inventive and intriguing sound within a well-populated, and often repetitive, genre of music.Â
With lyrics like "God is not the author of death" and "I'll come home when the ghosts are gone", Coming Home is full of creepy imagery, and reflections on death and loneliness and love. The concept of home, being a place of everlasting safety, comfort, and belonging, is also prevalent in the album's lyrics. When listening to the album, I get the sense that all the spooky ambience and deathly imagery is a reflection of the world outside of one's "home", a world in which situations are unforgiving and fate deals its cruel twists with a nonchalant meanness. The last song of the album, "Starting as People", brings us back to the only thing that matters: the power of another person to make the outside world, with all it's darkness and scariness, seem insignificant in comparison with the touch of their hand and the warmth of their companionship.Â
If you ask me, Giant Hand is one of the most interesting musicians to come out of Ottawa in recent years, and Coming Home is among the best albums of the year in Canadian music. Dig it deep, because it's cool as hell.
Catacombs - Giant Hand
Coming Down from the Mountains - Giant Hand
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