Quixoticism

AMG Review of Quixoticism

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

Ghost Stories is the group name adopted by near-one-man band Ron Lewis for his debut solo album Quixoticism after a lengthy apprenticeship playing with the Fruit Bats, the Joggers, Colin Meloy, and others. Joined only by Jonathan Rothman, who plays keyboards on a couple of tracks and Dan Strack, who plays sitar on another, Lewis produces a studio creation that harks back to the days of the Beatles circa 1967 in its combination of pop melodiousness and whimsy. Enough years and generations have passed since those days, however, that the Beatles influence sounds like it has been filtered through the group's descendents, particularly XTC. Still, that line of descent is fairly direct, as the use of sitar and Rothman's Mellotron should suggest. And then, this is indie pop, which always seems to mean that the vocals will be under-sung, under-recorded, and/or under-mixed. In this case, Lewis sings his playful, somewhat abstract lyrics in a high, uninvolved tenor that he filters, compresses, and tends to push off to one side or the other of the sonic picture, thus making the vocals more of another instrument than a particular focus. He is interested in the overall sound rather than in getting any point across via the words. The resulting impression on the listener is pleasant, even if the disc sometimes sounds unfinished.