“Ghosts” is music made at a crossroads. One road links the power of alternative rock music with the folk finesse of Appalachian ballads. The other is the route between gothic undertones and musical accessibility. And where these two paths cross, equidistant between all points, we find this new three-track EP from Raleigh duo, Kinsley.
“Cothan” opens things up, a dark folkscape that is initially spacious and full of anticipation. It gradually cloaks itself in ever more shaded textures and increased sonic weight, adding atmosphere and a growing sense of dread.
This is music made in the very traditional sense, too: music as storytelling, music that keeps old tales and forgotten histories alive, music as mythology, and campfire stories that remind us of a sense of place, both geographically and in terms of our position on the timeline of history.
And if the opener was a slow-burning piece, one erring on the side of a shaded take on folk music, “Catamount” is a bigger, more driven rock sound, but one used to create lilting soundscapes and textures that ebb and flow rather than the usual sucker-punch groove, this is a full rock delivery used to create a roots sound.
The title track rounds things off, the most understated of the three songs; even as electric guitars and anthemic sonics take over from the gentle acoustic cascades, it retains a delicacy and deftness in its delivery. Add banks of haunting vocal harmonies, a variety of musical motifs, and a clever use of dynamics, and you have a brilliant way to round things off —the perfect summation of Kinsley’s unique sound.
People have done folk-rock for generations, dark-folk, and gothic roots music; none of it is new, but even though this duo is, to a degree, working in familiar territory, what they have produced here is like little that you have heard before.
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