1) My Home Ghost; 2) Diamonds in the Sky; 3) Nightless Night; 4) Blueberry Tree Part I; 5) Blueberry Tree Part II; 6) Blueberry Tree Part III; 7) Hurricane (Don't Come Knocking); 8) Silent Woods; 9) Shadow Run; 10) Caravan
A dream pop trip down the Finnish woods, just as enchanting as that sounds.
Key tracks: "Diamonds in the Sky", "Hurricane (Don't Come Knocking)", "Caravan"
The big step for Husky Rescue on Ghost Is Not Real, their second album, is that they have become an actual band. Where the debut Country Falls was an archetypical producer’s record, the formation of a stable live unit around it lead to Husky Rescue becoming a group with a defined membership for the second album. With a more solid workforce behind the music, it's helped the project as a whole to steer into a more cohesive place. The defining elements of the debut are still the foundation of Husky Rescue's sound - dreamy soundscapes, gently hypnotising bass, whispering vocals and atmospheric melodies. Now, in addition, there’s a more focused approach to bringing those ideas into reality. Much moreso than the debut, Ghost Is Not Real is designed as a full journey with a clear trajectory and a conceptual angle to it, and in case it's not obvious then a third of the tracklist being dominated by a three-parter should tip you off. The biggest hint is in the liner note artwork for the album and its vivid nature imagery, both real and fantastic - and that's exactly where Husky Rescue have wandered off.
There was a pervasive, if a little hard-to-define Nordic charm and magic to Country Falls, and Ghost Is Not Real consciously dives into that a whole lot more this time around. Throughout the album the band very explicitly tap into various yet unmistakably Nordic nature imagery, e.g. “Nightless Night”, the “Blueberry Tree” trilogy and most poignantly on the wonderful serene winter stillness of "Silent Woods". Even in the songs where it isn't the central theme of the song, nature is still a tangible influence that pops up throughout one-off lyrics or even the sounds used within the songs. You don’t really listen to Husky Rescue for their lyrics but here they serve the important point of adding the final brushstrokes to the images painted with the music, hammering in the very atmosphere they’re trying to nail down. Country Falls created bite-size cinematic scores with each song and that approach is still there, but extended to a full-length feature. Ghost Is Not Real is a pseudo-documentary about road tripping through the Finnish countryside, each song a snapshot of a particular place and time that’s somewhere between real, vivid memories of seasons experienced and a kind of magical reality where every element is heightened.
Ghost Is Not Real invokes the beauty of the Finnish nature through the music especially well, in a way that even I think is preposterously pretentious to say if it wasn't for how I genuinely feel about it. To dig a little deeper there, my roots lie in Finland and the very thing I miss the most from my old haunts is the nature. Finland is a large country with a small population, with stretches and stretches of forests, fields and lakes in-between and even within the central population areas. Because the country is up north, it gets the full range of seasons in their most iconic guises: the cold, snow-covered winters, the verdant and warm summer, the visible transformation of spring and the multi-colour melancholy of autumn. Nightless nights in midsummer, the darkness that never ends in the depth of winter. You grow up in Finland and the nature becomes an integral part of who you are as a person, with deeply ingrained sensory memories which still feel fresh decades later. Those feelings and memories are pretty much impossible to really describe with words to people who do not have them (though, full caveat, will have their own equivalents), and much less in a way that doesn’t involve any kind of visuals. But that's precisely what Husky Rescue have achieved here. I listen to Ghost Is Not Real and I see those places in my mind; what the band have created here stirs those memories.
Strictly from a musical perspective, at the heart of Ghost Is Not Real as well as Husky Rescue in general lies an artful balance between between instantly affecting pop songs with big, bold melodies, and daydreamy mood pads that drift the listener somewhere else. The debut had a slight imbalance between the two, but here the band have achieved as close to an equilibrium as they can. “Diamonds in the Sky” is the very testament to that: it's the dictionary definition of Husky Rescue's sound and it's as perfect as you’d want that kind of ideal representation to be, both in terms of its sugar-sweet melodies and the lush ambience in-between them, transporting you to the backseat of a car driving through the quiet night-time countryside. “Caravan” might be an even better example. Each Husky Rescue album has that one stand-out hit cut where the band go all-in on those melodic hooks and "Caravan" is arguably the very best of them, with a driving chorus so sweet and gorgeous you’ll brush away the inherent bittersweetness of the song itself. It's a magnificent song that's both a jolt of energy as well as guaranteed headphone heaven, and if you haven't been convinced by Reeta-Leena's vocals being absolutely pitch perfect for the band's sound by the end the of the album, it's her heavenly presence here that should act as the ultimate proof. As a frontperson she's not the type who instantly commands the floor the second she steps in front of the mic, but after the practice run of the debut her soft delivery has bloomed into an essential part of the warmth of Husky Rescue's music.
The big thing that Ghost Is Not Real introduces is the added dynamics to the group's sound. They're a real band now - a band who have gotten to trust eachother on stage and who play excellently together, and which they've decided to take to the studio with them. There's so many moments on Ghost Is Not Real that have a thrilling energy to them or which downright burst to life because of how the group, well, sound like a group on the record. The seven-minute, guitar-revved "Nightless Night" is a mad rush through the woods for its entire length and legitimately rocks, which is a brand new concept for Husky Rescue but introduced excellently because they sound like a group playing tightly together and not just session musicians. Later down the line "Hurricane (Don't Come Knocking)" takes that same urgency and retools it for use in what otherwise could have been another (admittedly lovely) dream pop song, but now it explodes and cascades in whimsical abandon while still retaining its studio-perfect arrangements; the production and arrangements in general are fantastic throughout, perfect for a headphone jaunt, and it's surprisingly the wilder moments like "Hurricane" that really bring it out. The "Blueberry Tree" trilogy is understandably the album's heart: the dreamy build-up of part 1 starts the experience gently, before moving onto the magical part 2 that skitters gleefully in its twinkling melodies, and finally the last part builds on the melodies of the first two and grows them into a majestic post-rock-esque rock climax. Together they form a gorgeous ten-minute journey that tips its toes into the various facets of Husky Rescue, brings out the beauty of the nature themes the album is centered around and ends in a thrilling way that paves the way perfectly for the last half of the album. The band sound alive and in sync, not just studio wizardry anymore but utilising the pitch-perfect production to heighten their own chemistry.
Ghost Is Not Real is Husky Rescue's best record purely from a musical perspective and through its songs, and that's something I'd imagine is a fairly universal, non-controversial take. What makes it special for me though is the particular atmosphere it invokes. I'm not certain how much they exactly planned to channel the spirit of their country through when they went all-in on the nature imagery around the album (I can't find any interviews, sadly), but I do know that after moving out of Finland this was one of the albums that kept me company when homesick, precisely because of how much like home it sounded. Between the blissful melodies and delicate soundtrack textures there's a warm, tangible feeling I associate clearly with my own roots - delivered through the perfectly fitting form of a stunningly good dream pop album.
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