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Happy Love Ghosts (2019 mix)

by The Pleasures Pale

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J.D. Fuerholzer
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Jerry Lewis
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1.
Happy Love Ghosts 04:53
lyrics
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How the evening moans And nestles around your lovely body How the evening floats And settles in my empty room Sultry shadows loom On a bare and lonesome wall Washed with Coletrane lush-life songs Hush, hush, hush These are strangely frightful nights In this town we are in this room We lie listening as the piano moves Tears from a grieving face Are tears from a leaving face Happy love ghosts at play In my empty room Up the stairs in the old house Creaking steps seem to say It's a wine and soft-bed delusion And I'm afraid I'm prey These are strangely frightful nights In this town we are in this room We lie listening as the piano moves Tears from a grieving face Are tears from a leaving face Happy love ghosts at play In my empty room Oh, it haunts me now Oh, it haunts me now Tears from a grieving face Are tears from a leaving face Happy love ghosts at play In my empty room In my empty room It haunts me now In my empty room It haunts me now
2.
Hideous Monsters 03:38
lyrics
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Sad she sat on trembling hands Battered shell and shattered plans She rose from the bed Sighed and softly said I am not afraid, this world's deranged How strange... Fate asked me to follow her down Into the depths of the fury and sound She fell to the floor Cried and cried once more I am not afraid, this world's deranged How strange... Sorrow follows me While monsters live and breathe Shadows now haunt my dreams While monsters live and breathe Hideous monsters, they live and breathe Chance appeared on a gathering storm Pulled me in to suffer and mourn She rose from the bed Through blackened eyes she said Lust, it fades; love, it fails How cruel... Sorrow follows me While monsters live and breathe Shadows now haunt my dreams While monsters live and breathe Hideous monsters, they live and breathe Down she went into an endless sea To find a place to be forever free It swallowed her Now sorrow follows me

about

In the fall of 1985, recently formed and with access to a 4-track cassette recorder, The Pleasures Pale made a series of raw demo recordings, mostly full-band sessions with electrified guitars and either Tim Payton Earick or Jeff Keating on drums. On at least one occasion, however, the band’s songwriting nucleus — guitarist Mitchell Swann, bassist Luis Lerma, and singer Jeffrey Bright — met for an acoustic (or quietly amped) songwriting session. One such session, likely in November or December of 1985 resulted in several multi-tracked song sketches, including one of the more enigmatic pieces in the band’s early repertoire.

“Happy Love Ghosts,” in its original capture, was constructed on Swann’s treated acoustic guitar, Lerma’s string bass, Bright’s low crooning and phantom moans, and a thumping floor drum, attribution unknown. Here, as part of the restoration and reassembly of the “Daily Living Is a Herculean Art” demos, the song has been fleshed out with piano, additional voice, and full-kit percussion. Notably, it has also been edited into an extended rendition, providing a newly realized vision of what is likely the Pale at their most textural and atmospheric — and a more complete marking of the band’s early days in Bright’s rented, mostly empty Marcella Avenue house on Dayton’s north side.

That sparely appointed, two-story structure would play a prominent role in TPP’s early development: Not only did the band meet and rehearse in its basement from late 1985 through most of 1986, it also served as a shadow muse in Bright’s songwriting. As the site of a relationship collapse that left its interior void of furnishings but inhabited by an aftermath of unease and emotional upheaval — as well as a symphony of inexplicable noises — the house assumed a character role in a number of the band’s early songs. In particular, HLG floats in a murky interior netherworld where past mingles with present, where future is beyond comprehension, and where regret lingers in each corner of every empty room to haunt the promise in each new night and each new romantic episode.

“Hideous Monsters” is a fresh retelling of “Twirling Miranda,” a lilting, folk-tinged composition that appeared in the band’s early performances, and could be interpreted as a tragic/romantic tale of domestic abuse and its insidious reach beyond the immediate victim. Again, initially captured as a minimal guitar and bass sketch, the song has been fully realized here to more succinctly paint a poignant and too-common portrait of painful private turmoil.

Together, both songs find the band at their most “pale,” unabashedly experimenting with different styles and root genres, eager to stray from pop and rock norms of the period, and as always, bravely confronting emotional boundaries and the confines of the masculine stereotype.

Leave the door unlocked for more from The Pleasures Pale, including the full “Daily Living Is a Herculean Art” LP, coming soon.

credits

released October 31, 2019

voice – jeffrey bright
guitars – mitchell swann
string bass – luis lerma ​
additional sounds – jeffrey bright

initial recording:
marcella house
dayton, ohio
1985

additional recording:
san francisco, california
2017-2019

cover photo – unknown
cover design – jeffrey bright

c) 1985 The Pleasures Pale
p) 2019 JABMA
Fugitive Music Publishing / BMI

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The Pleasures Pale Dayton, Ohio

The Pleasures Pale was an influential indie quartet based in Dayton Ohio active from 1985 to 1987. Oft-compared to anglo groups such as The Smiths, TPP's influences can now be read as more diverse — taking cues from postpunk, rockabilly, swing, Motown and Dayton funk. A band for misfits, their extensive, lyric-driven output sought to light a way through the rust belt's post-industrial bleakness. ... more

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