Birthday Party, Self-released ★★★½
Though they put out a seven-inch split with Negative Fun Records in 2014 and loosed a few one-off tracks into the waves of the internet in recent years, Marc Kuzio and his bandmates in Raleigh’s Ghostt Bllonde once seemed in danger of disappearing.
Five years on from the lovable, ramshackle AM-pop blitz of their first record, 2013’s Trashpop // Doomwop, a second LP had yet to surface. But fortunately, the promising young act didn’t succumb to the chaos of fretting over mixing, labels, and life minutiae: The universe at last aligned to deliver Ghostt Bllonde’s enjoyable second album, Birthday Party.
The whirring sound of a cassette ushers in “Past Lives (If It Works),” the record’s intentionally misleading opener. Smothered in tape hiss and distortion, the track slowly colors itself into a clean and precise hi-fi audio mix. It’s an immediate sign that this album, which was mixed and co-produced by Triangle music staple Missy Thangs, has pristine Spector-style production benchmarks. The effect also works as a cheeky reference to Ghostt Bllonde’s own punk origins, recording scrappy music on whatever gear was available and playing through cruddy house party PAs at long-shuttered early-2010s Raleigh DIY spaces.
That track segues into the firework pop of “Birthday Party,” a propulsive fist-pumper. As on the first record, Ghostt Bllonde’s elemental talents visibly lie in buoyant, high-wire rock songs that draw life from the deep recesses of pop music. The band interlaces these influences well, collapsing post-Strokes 2010s festival circuit rock and their own unique constellation of vintage pop references into an inventive and accessible neo-surf style.
It’s little sonic touches that make that clear, like the infectious guitar lick that closes “Parallels,” or in the maximalist, energy-building drum fills that carry “High Rise” into the atmosphere. Kuzio builds up exuberant doom and gloom like a reinforced bunker, only to be party-crashed by reams of sunshine guitars and triumphant disco bass.
Birthday Party is a charming follow up from Ghostt Bllonde. It doesn’t reboot their chosen sound, nor does it really need to. There is something to be said for slightly iterating on but otherwise leaving whole what was already a confident, well-constructed rock band.