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Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
A few months back we premiered “Now and Then,” the sixth and final track off Ghost Fan Club’s self-titled EP. The song, like all of Ghost Fan Club, is a tastefully baroque slowcore-indebted take on bedroom pop, stripped relatively bare to allow Tyler Costolo’s emotions to fill every gap. We were lucky enough for Costolo to stop by to break down every song on the EP; read that below while you give Ghost Fan Club a listen.
Intro:
This one is kinda funny to me, I wrote it a full step down (in other words, tuned lower than a guitar normally is) to try and suit my voice a bit better, but ended up cutting out the part with lyrics. There was a whole middle section with different guitar parts and vocals, but I ended up just preferring it as a quick instrumental. Definitely wearing the slowcore inspiration on my sleeves with this one.
Love Bug:
I think the most interesting anecdote with this song is that the main little synth line was first written on guitar. I liked how it sounded as written, but thought it needed a bit of a different tone to balance out with the other guitar layers. Love Bug was what my grandma called me when I was a kid, but they are also the awful little insects that make driving impossible down south for months at a time. I like the dichotomy of something said with love and something so universally despised.
Shoulders:
The chorus of this song is a true story. I had been so wrapped up in the umbilical cord that I was dark purple and nearly died. I think about that a lot–before I was even out into the world, I was already thinking about leaving.
Please:
I write a lot of songs about not being able to sleep. It’s a common issue for me. Between anxiety / panic attacks, sleep paralysis, and back pain it can be a troubling. I don’t know about you, but if I position my head a certain way on my pillow, I can hear and feel my heartbeat in my ears. I absolutely cannot sleep like this, because the sound of my own heart fills me with a strong existential dread. It’s like listening to a timer tick down your life.
Brave:
There is a certain freedom in giving up. If you don’t care, what can you be bothered about? That is essentially the idea of this song. Maybe one day I can just accept life for what it is, give up, and just be happy. But for now, I want more.
Now and Then:
I have a bad habit of being unable to live in the moment. Times where I should just be glad to be alive, I can’t get the gnawing sense of unease out of my head. Yeah, I’m definitely happy now and then, but a lot of the time, I have to pretend.
Ghost Fan Club is out now.
—
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
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