John Grant
Pale Green Ghosts

Hot drink, a good book and time to spend on himself. I almost feel envious of this man in his golden dimension devoted to recreation. But the individual in the impeccable jacket and tweed vest seems not to recognize his privilege. Austere, with an air halfway between wary and threatening, he scrutinizes me through the screen, in the contours of a snapshot that captures an (extra)ordinary moment of life. However, every respectable artist must appear extravagant, and the musician poet from Denver is no exception. He is still intent on licking his lips, satiated with acclaim and profits from the stunning debut three years prior; but time passes, and laurel leaves wither, and he, the father of the "Queen of Denmark," is not thinking of abdicating the throne, so he resurfaces in 2013 with his ghosts to exorcize, borderline tales, discomforts, the solitude of "a hundred billion castaways" as someone would say, and he does it just as he knows how. Perhaps the gestations were made right at that table sipping a fair number of hot drinks, but this is absolutely irrelevant.

What is important is the tortuous path traveled by Grant, full of obstacles and setbacks, barely lit to attract distracted listeners who rarely venture beyond the beam of light. So Our One, his Czars, and the soul-caresses sown in six or slightly more works, despite being under the protective wing of Bella Union's eternal Simon Raymonde, go unnoticed like a light gust of wind in the clear summer sky, leaving an interesting fan of noteworthy songs and a considerable number of bottles emptied. It is 2004, everyone will remember it for the cookie between Denmark and Sweden, few or none as the year the Czars closed shop.

Grant, at thirty-six, realizes it is too late to be a plumber and too soon to leave music, so he moves to the far-east of the stars and stripes, to the city that never sleeps. "New York has all the iridescence of the beginning of the world" stated Scott Fitzgerald, and Grant probably thought there was no better place to reset and start anew than this, from the starting line of the globe. Fortune, as we know, favors the brave, and it materializes in the shapes of Paul Alexander & Co. (Midlake), who first take the big guy (like the Flaming Lips) around North America up and down the stages and then co-produce "Queen Of Denmark," and no further words are needed.

Three years separate "Pale Green Ghosts" from the aforementioned first effort. Instead, six years pass between "Queen Of Denmark" and the last with the Czars as a full-fledged band (in "Sorry I Made You Cry" there is only John and the abandoned instruments). The number of perfection (Leopardi teaches) recurs in Grant's fundamental milestones. Well, it's just a coincidence, not even that striking. Anyway, aside from "cabalistic" semiotics, the former Czars, between the time spent hiding from his demons and that dedicated to sipping rejuvenating, meditative intoxicating fluids, churns out two records that monopolize all (or almost all) the covers of the industry's magazines.

So, as I was saying, the bearded singer-songwriter is here before me, scrutinizing me with incredible expressiveness, like a subject out of 19th-century realism paintings, urging me to listen. And I don't need to be asked twice.

"Pale Green Ghosts" is a slow-release work; it needs to be well settled before one can grasp its delights. The thousand faces of the album are the natural transposition of the host of ghosts residing in Grant's secret chambers. The powerful and baritonal ballads of "Pale Green Ghosts" are a journey into the artist's most remote recesses, narrating and evoking death ("Sensitive New Age Guy" written for a suicidal friend) and the life that, despite everything, flows ("Ernest Borgnine" where he cites his HIV-positive status). Flashes and dark passages go hand in hand in the eleven tracks of the bunch, spanning from the aseptic electronics of the initial title track "Pale Green Ghosts" and "You Don't Have To" to chapters like "I Hate This Town," learned from Sergeant Pepper's lesson, "GMF" and "It Doesn't Matter to Him" where he abandons digital gadgets and synthesizers and takes up an acoustic guitar like a brand-new Van Morrison, maintaining the album's thread intact. All finely decorated by choral sessions from a certain Sinead O'Connor ("Why Don’t You Love Me Anymore" above all). "Glacier," the rear light, closes the second chapter in the soft notes of a poignant lullaby for piano and voice, reminiscent of the Titanic orchestra which unwaveringly continues to play while everything sinks, down to the last centimeter of hope, to the first decisive step into the void.

"Pale Green Ghosts" exudes anguish from every pore but does not wallow in self-pity, exorcising unease with subtle, resigned humor. Life goes on despite everything. "You know how to get what you want, don't you?"...he definitely does, and he continues to sip the hot drink that has since gone cold.