Ghost of Vroom – the new band comprised of veteran singer-songwriter Mike Doughty (Soul Coughing) and his longtime collaborator, bassist Andrew “Scrap” Livingston – share their new animated video created by the visual artist SWIVS for the song "James Jesus Angelton." The song comes from the recently released GHOST OF VROOM 1 out now via Mod y Vi Records. Produced by Doughty and the legendary Mario Caldato Jr. (Beastie Boys, Jack Johnson, Seu Jorge), GHOST OF VROOM 1 sees Ghost of Vroom fusing tense breakbeats, eclectic instrumentation, and Doughty’s celebrated lyrical dexterity to create a wildly inspired sound praised by American Songwriter for its “urgency and relevance…a beyond-perfect union, centered around a solid rhythm section, that elaborates on the hip-hop influences Doughty picked up as a young kid when he had just moved to New York in the late eighties.”
WATCH "JAMES JESUS ANGLETON"
"The song is about James Jesus Angleton, head of the CIA during Vietnam – one of the masters of Cold War paranoia," said Doughty. "When he was in college, he ran a poetry magazine – he even published TS Eliot. So he was this weird balance of artist and spy. He vouched for a British spy accused of being a double agent – but in fact, the guy was a Soviet agent, and it broke Angleton's heart. The track is meant to sound scary, as well as heartbreaking – the human being in the center of these sinister tentacles. I do a weekly new song for my Patreon, and, one week, I had nothing, so I sat down in the Best Western with a guitar to bang something out – I was reading A Spy Among Friends, by John le Carre, and that was the inspiration for the topic. The song just spooled out in fifteen minutes, the way the best songs often do."
GHOST OF VROOM 1 was heralded early in February with the audio release of the first song, “I Hear the Ax Swinging.” An official music video directed by Dicktown co-creator and co-star David Rees was released later in the month.
“I’m a huge David Rees fan — he is a samurai of modern absurdity,” Doughty told FLOOD magazine who premiered the clip. “I’m aiming for that with the lyrics, which is meant to be a confabulation of verbal sonics, language looping back and glitching on itself. So I think we’re a real love match artistically.”
FLOOD went on to say, "the video certainly achieves this level of absurdity, blending weirdo animation, nature-doc scenery, and dancing chipmunks in a way that only really makes sense when attached to Doughty’s surrealist word association."
“What struck us most about this song were the lyrics,” Rees told FLOOD. “They felt like cartoon dialogue from a dream. So we tried to make a lo-fi dreamscape for the band to play in, complete with an attention-seeking skull-snake and a hot air balloon ride—which all good dreams should have.”
WATCH "I HEAR THE AX SWINGING"
Recorded in Memphis, TN and completed at Caldato’s Eagle Rock studio space in Los Angeles a mere three days before California entered its first lockdown, the album follows last summer’s debut EP, GHOST OF VROOM 2, available via Mod y Vi Records on 12” black 180 gram vinyl with audio on Side A – including a vinyl-only exclusive instrumental track – and an etching of the cover artwork on Side B.
GHOST OF VROOM 2 includes the first single, “Rona Pollona,” joined by an animated music video streaming now at YouTube following its exclusive premiere via Rolling Stone, which applauded the “sardonic ode to the Covid-19 era” for its “extremely online stream-of-consciousness” and “laid back groove of shuffling drums, twisting guitar and lazy cello strokes, recalling the way A Tribe Called Quest flipped Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ for ‘Can I Kick It?’”
Hailed by Stereogum for its “offbeat, not-quite-this and not-quite-that arrangements – and, of course, Doughty’s famous tongue-in-cheek rhymes,” GHOST OF VROOM 2 also includes “Chief of Police” and “1918,” both accompanied by animated music videos streaming now at YouTube.
Mike Doughty first conjured Ghost of Vroom after the acclaimed release of his 2016 solo album, THE HEART WATCHES WHILE THE BRAIN BURNS. Now based in Memphis, TN, he initially considered a reunion with his former bandmates in the groundbreaking Soul Coughing but when those plans fell through, a new band was clearly in order. Doughty enlisted his longtime musical collaborator, bassist Andrew “Scrap” Livingston and set to work, weaving free-form wordplay and idiosyncratic lyricism with a dynamic, genre-agnostic musical approach that simultaneously celebrates and further evolves Doughty’s fascinating, two-decade-plus body of work.
Doughty has been creating a wide range of new music via his official Patreon page, with all patrons receiving exclusive access to at least one completely new song each week along with an autographed cassette tape-recorded live-in-studio at Memphis Magnetic Recording Co. Additional extras include the LIVE! AT ROYAL CD and a Ghost of Vroom t-shirt exclusive to Patreon members. For more information, please visit www.patreon.com/doughty.
Patreon members recently received free access to an all-new, all-improv set from Ghost of Vroom. Recorded at Memphis Magnetic Recording Co, the one-of-a-kind performance featured Doughty on vocals, sampler and guitar, Livingston on cello and keys, Madden “Lil Pepper” Klass on drums, and Logan Hanna on guitar. Additional livestream events will be announced soon.
Last year also saw the publication of Doughty’s acclaimed second memoir, I Die Each Time I Hear The Sound, available now from Hachette Books where books are sold. Praised by Kirkus Reviews as “a witty rock memoir delivered with arty, aphoristic verve,” this highly original gathering of autobiographical stories sees Doughty, in his inimitable voice, sending dispatches from a touring musician’s peripatetic life, vividly recalling moments when profound musical experiences made him see the world anew. Funny, vulnerable, and unsparing, I Die Each Time I Hear The Sound is a unique narrative, unstuck in time, and an unforgettable examination of what it is to be an artist in this cultural moment.
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