School Of Seven Bells
Ghostory

I like this record, which means it’s hard to review it. I especially like it first thing in the morning, as I’m getting dressed and its guitars are whooshing through me, putting a little bit of a pep in my step for the rest of the day. I like it on the treadmill because it pushes me along. On the tube, its hazy whirl swishes around and washes away the world around me. At my desk, at full blast, I totally lose my shit, playing air drums with my eyes shut, wriggling in my chair and shaking all that dust on my books whilst the neighbours bang on the door. Last thing at night is good too, on the night bus, lights drifting by, the pace of the world seems to speed right up or slows right-right down as the drums skitter along and then stop as if they soar over a ravine and then tumble you into a crescendo... I pull out my phone and start making notes-for-this-review, and I'm scribbling things like 'Guitars erupt like flowering fountains...'

I love this record because it’s the exact album I was hoping M83 was going to make (just for me) last year. I love it because it’s everything School of Seven Bells' swooping/swirling debut promised, and all the things the follow-up wasn’t to be. I love it because it’s shoegaze gone a bit headlight-staring, drums-as-guns, guitars-a’blaring then guitars-gone-misty, all the while I’m a reviewer-gone-gushing-puddle-of... If I could just... If I could just find the words... If I could count the ways... If I could use metaphors about water for an entire review I’d probably write something about how this record dives into me, how it drips and then explodes like a spouting whale but we’d be here all day... I could perhaps bang on and on and on about the way in which, from start to finish, Ghostory seems to make my heart shake with its words which seem to be from one twin to another, slightly devastated... I can’t really explain... all these emotions seep out from the surface of the sound but all the while my breath is taken away because of the drums which are ricocheting around inside my head and my legs are doing this sort of nervous twitching that could almost be called dancing (but looks more like Ian Curtis having a fit).

Perhaps I could avoid talking about water and describe Ghostory as if it was a storm and I’m that something in its eye. It’s a tropical hoolie that sometimes blows ice-cold. A blustery, blizzardy, blowy, blasty, bubbly, jumbly, juttering, jiggering, juddering, jack-knifing, zig-zagging, zip-zippity, whizzing, whizz-banging, whirling, wowing... a most wonderful storm of a record indeed.

Perhaps I could dip back to childhood and talk about something like: Alice, when she was entering Wonderland and how she followed those ‘drink me’ and ‘eat me’ instructions but what’s a boy to do when he hears the words “devour me” repeated again and again, and sung by a lady whose voice swarms like a gust of cherry blossom? And that’s just the first song on the album and I’m not sure I can even begin to describe the rest because I feel a bit like I’m Jonah, and she’s The Whale, and him what used to be in Secret Machines who’s making this My Bloody Valentine squall behind the hall of Bat for Lashes mirrors, is like the ocean in which I’m drowning.... I give up, I’m just gonna put on my headphones and go for a walk in the rain, someone else can write this sodding review.