Stage left is Aaron Kyle Behrens, a singer/rudimentary guitarist with the form of stage presence that would give you to believe that he fronts a metal band. Behrens is a captivating performer who does much with little, integrating traditional cock rock stances with the occasional serpentine king-of-pop moves.
Stage right is Thomas Ross Turner, a lone star caped crusader/ infrequent drummer who twiddles knobs that emit an endless array of glurns, bleeps, zlips and murms.
Turner is the alchemist of the operation.
More than anything, Ghostland Observatory is way over substance. Their live performance features a cinematic light appearance that would represent the mildest epileptic into a state of full cardiac arrest. It is nothing less than epic, and is undoubtedly main cause for attending a show. It is an eyeball searing electronic sky, simultaneously combining Battlestar Galactica, Disney's Space Mountain ride and every Laserium show ever produced.
Their music is astoundingly simple. It is fundamentally comprised of Behrens yelp-rapping over the top of one to two chords backed by a hypnotic beat. Varying versions of this formula are repeated ad infinitum, and the crowd could not have cared less; they're here for the spectacle. Sometimes lights and a thumping 4/4 is all you wishing for a good time. This band figured that out and ran with it.
Close your eyes for a moment, take the light show off and what you're left with is music that is fundamentally rudimentary. But in an age where saccharine mall pop and unimaginative autotuned hip-hop dominate the charts, why shouldn't the indie scene have its own version?
One can only imagine how this band got started. I get a visual of two nerds in a cellar with a drum machine and an echo unit. One would tap on the keys whilst the other would screech and operate the light switch. This is what happens when indie-rock kids drop weed in favor of club drugs.
Campy but not gay, trendy but grotesquely unfashionable, Ghostland Observatory is a high school skit with a million dollar light show gone horribly and brilliantly wrong. Their disastrous mashup of thumping din, echoing shrieks and thrift store chic is lovely and frustrating at the same time. Their audacity is charming, and they certainly are original. They take the Texas kook torch with pride.
Ghostland Observatory finishes up their cross country tour in Dallas on New Year's Eve.
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