Albums Indie Pop Premiere Singer/Songwriter

Premiere: Kristin Chambers’s ‘Kissing Ghosts’

Release date: October 18, 2019

Premiere: Kristin Chambers’s ‘Kissing Ghosts’ October 17, 20191 Comment

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Photo courtesy of Kristin Chambers // Photo by Mac Chambers

As a child, Halloween was my favorite holiday. I relished the time of year when I could let go of who I was — just for a day — and step into something or someone else’s body. Each year, I vied to outdo my previous year’s costume, and I went through a plethora of incredibly eccentric ideas: one year I turned a paper leaf bag inside out, cut off the bottom to make a hat, and donned the bag and now-red-colored makeshift stovepipe and went as a toe (with a painted toenail). Another year, I cut arm holes in a box and put some gift wrap on a headband and went as a Kleenex box, which worked well besides the fact that the box was so big it inhibited my ability to move my arms, so if I ever dropped my treat-or-treat bag, someone else would have to pick it up and hand it back to me.

While I still take deep pride in my costume choices — I’m an Aquarius — and Halloween is still my favorite holiday, my sentiments now are more rooted not in leaving myself for a day, but in experiencing another side of myself for a day: what parts of myself have I neglected over the past year, and how can I challenge myself to embody that again? What ghosts have I let haunt me? Can I cut two holes in a white sheet, drape it over my body, and become the haunter — the one in charge — instead of the haunted?

And that’s why Kristin Chambers’s new full-length, Kissing Ghosts, feels uncommonly relevant. Out officially tomorrow, the ten-track piano-pop album is a collection of tracks written over the past year that beckons to the ghosts of the past through complex vocal harmonies, flittingly gritty piano, and melodies that stick in your head like glue.

“Many of the songs are me wrestling down these ghosts of situations in my life with which I hadn’t come to terms,” said Chambers. “Writing the songs brought them to life under some light, and I can honestly say I feel differently about those moments in my life. That’s the beauty of art — it can be cathartic.”

Kissing Ghosts opens with “Oxygen of Love,” a lilting track about all-encompassing passion that makes a case to be the best album opener of the year. Focused mainly on Chambers’s vocals, with a light accompaniment on vibraphone (Jacques Willis), guitar (Roger Lloyd, who also produced the album), and drums (Willis), “Oxygen” masterfully sets the tone for the rest of the album: emotional, true, and filled with compelling melodic musicianship.

While most of the album slides through long-held notes paired with piano riffs, title track “Kissing Ghosts” and eighth tune “Diamond” are the Ghosts standouts, with their more rhythmic and harder-hitting natures. Of her catharsis, Chambers said, “I’m not one to wallow or blame, so that anger is tempered by forgiveness.” Slower, more melodic tunes like “Oxygen,” “Modern Love,” and “Come To Me,” groove into that forgiveness, but “Ghosts” and “Diamond” tap more into that anger under the surface, filling out the soundscape of Kissing Ghosts as an intricate, multi-faceted piece of art.

It’s also in “Ghosts” and “Diamond” that we get some of Chambers’s most lurching lyricism, respectively: “destination disappeared and I’m circling my tail / burnt wick, throat thick / I’m scattered all around now like pick-up sticks,” and “when they find me, I’ll be shining / a diamond from the pressure of a million lies / shining like a diamond / a buried treasure that perfects itself in time.”

Beautifully sequenced from start to finish, Kissing Ghosts tells the story of a year in time, a Halloween to Halloween and all the ghosts in between. With her “tiny hands” (“You’re The Song”) cascading across the piano, Kristin Chambers has crafted a journey that will take you into your own personal haunted mansion, and it’s up to you whether you find Fatso, Stinky, and Stretch or Casper.

Comments

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).