DMB and Ghost, a double header of confusing proportions

On this episode of Two Things That Shouldn't Be Anywhere Near Each Other, Dave Matthews Band takes us for a Walk Around The Moon, and Ghost releases a bizarre EP of cover tunes. What weird conglomeration of circumstances led to these things sharing a May 19 release date is anybody's guess, i'm just here to disassemble them and order the necessary replacement parts. 

First up is the new Dave Matthews Band LP, Walk Around The Moon. I don't know whether that means we're really looking at all the debris strewn around this here moon of the sun, or if we're literally walking around it to specifically avoid doing so, but i assume we'll find out fairly quick. I also assume Boyd Tinsley won't be joining us, but even i'm not going there. 

Superfans of Dave Matthews Band have heard 58.3% of these songs played live at various times, but i haven't because i've been under the table and dreaming. Enough of my one-liners already, let's just give it a spin. 

K, so he met a girl in a red polka dot dress in the woods, and now we're in some kind of kaleidoscopic blue and red dream. Sure, that's Dave Matthews. 

Middle Eastern type espionage music for the song about school shootings. It's so on the nose it's practically up it, but it's also really good, so we'll just keep walking. 

Just keep hammering and hoping to find gold or diamonds or anything valuable and wondering if it will ever be worth it, but either way you just keep hammering and hoping. 

Then after that it really does dissolve into the Random Crap album it purports to be. Longtime readers will know that's not an insult at all, it's just my name for an album that appears "in no particular order." He's just walking around the moon and commenting on the junk the people who were here before him left lying around. You know, random crap. 

Musically it's all over the place, Jazz, Blues, Balladry, some seriously spanky Rock riffs, lovely solos and jams, Dave Matthews sounding exactly like normal weird Dave Matthews, it's a completely enjoyable 40ish minutes of completely listenable music. 

Man that intro riff to Break Free is just fantastic. You might like other stuff, but for me that's the standout track with its alt-rock groove, jazz rock horn backup, and space-synth interlude. 

Yeah, what a totally bizarre thing, Dave Matthews Band made a Space-Rock album. I get it, i mean the larger concept with the photographs is that they went to sleep as grisley old prospectors and woke up in their backwoods cabin in the West Virginia wilderness like any other day, but stepped out into the 2020s wondering if they accidentally ate the wrong batch of mushrooms, and sometimes things just fall apart and eventually this war will be over and we'll try again. Kind of a depressing album, to be honest. 

Good though, i quite enjoyed it, and the mash up of normal DMB with synths and weird noises sounds shockingly normal. Well, except for Madman's Eyes, that sounds too much like Alanis Morissette's Uninvited to not make my morbid sense of humor feel incredibly conflicted, but on the scale of Random Crap albums, this one is a solid 8 out of fish sticks. It's got vitamins and minerals and omega 3s, and you can dunk it in ketchup if you need the lycopine. Not the fanciest feast, but absolutely nothing to complain about. 

Now the even weirder question, how in the hell is Tobias Forge going to assemble an EP of cover songs that culminates with Tina Turner's epic contribution to the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome soundtrack? All i know is imma be real unhappy if it turns out as just an excuse to release his version of Phantom of the Opera. He may be the 4th satanically analogous anti-Pope, but he ain't no Tina Turner so he's set the bar pretty high for himself from where i'm sitting. 

First up is Television's See No Evil. Actually it's a really good cover. I mean it's metal as opposed Television's early Punk, but i got no beef. 

Then a Genesis cover that again is totally in the spirit of the frantically sarcastic send up of televangelism that is Jesus He Knows Me, but the pop-metal version of it. 

Hanging Around isn't quite as good though. It's fine for what it is, but Ghost plays it way faster and the Metal version of Glam just isn't nearly as convincing as Punk or New Wave for some reason i can't quite describe. It loses almost all of its original trashiness, i guess. Oh well, on to Iron Maiden and Tina. 

Paul Di'Anno really hated it. He later deleted his post, but he definitely hated it. That's fair, i mean Paul did originally sing this song, but he also got fired for taking snorting cocain more serious than being the singer of Iron Maiden so it really comes down to whether or not you like Tobias Forge, but you do kind of have remember he's Papa Emeritus IV at this point, and i don't think you can just choose to forget that when you're listening to Ghost. Right? Like, if you hate Ghost, then haven't they proven their point that they absolutely don't need your approval to pay the compulsory license and cover your song? 

Do i like any of these better than the originals? No, not even remotely, but that's completely not the point. The point is that these songs add up to a Ghost album, and as corny as the title Phantomime is, it tells you exactly what your hearing: extravagant theatrical entertainment set to music played by nameless ghouls. What are these songs about? I think it's pretty obvious: you don't need somebody hypocritically telling you how to live your life or forcing you to believe in their self-appointed authority, you just go live it and enjoy what you do. I'll say this, every single one of these songs sounds definitively like how you'd expect Ghost to play them, and they're all better than any Five Flavor Fruit Punch version of anything.

Absolutely bizarre that both these albums are essentially about putting the past behind us and moving beyond this stupid ideological warfare so people can just be people, but there you go, DMB and Ghost presenting completely opposite approaches to the same basic topic.