Sample Sounds From Local Band Timbre Ghost and Support Their Indiegogo Campaign to Fund Their New LP

Minneapolis-based Timbre Ghost is holding an Indiegogo campaign to rally support for the recording of a full-length album.

The band is the passion project of Dustin Tessier, formerly of Lazer Forever, who self-recorded and released a debut EP called “The Ledger” in late 2016. Live, Tessier is backed by the drumming of Adam Patterson (American Cream, Magic Castles) and the bass of Dylan Ritchie (Grant Hart, Teenage Strangler, Prissy Clerks), a group that has shared a stage with such beloved Minnesota artists as Kid Dakota, Dosh, and the Black-eyed Snakes.

“The Ledger” EP is a collection of six songs, which the band says are “conceived from the experiences of its writer bracing up against the darkest borders of his personal life and innermost mind.” That couldn’t be more true. “You have been here before,” Tessier sings on the opener, “now you’re back again. You’d think by now you would learn.” For anyone who knows of what Kurt Cobain called “the comfort in being sad,” the emotion behind the lyric is familiar, and as seductive as it is terrifying. The record is a siren’s call.

But “The Ledger” is far from simply “depressing.” It is a remarkably strong collection of songs that sees Tessier dabbling in various modes of American rock music, suffused with the kind of airy heaviness of recent Low releases, with sonic similarities to artists like Built to Spill, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Neil Young. Tessier’s clear tenor is double-tracked almost throughout, each lyric a full-hearted contrapuntal lamentation.

When it was released in late 2016, “The Ledger” was all I spun for a good two weeks. I was haunted by it. The songs all invite (and reward) special attention, and it’s clear that an equally focused attention went into crafting them. It is also clear that Tessier’s songwriting arises from a sincere, exhaustive love of music; it represents a Whitman-like ideal of soundcraft (It is large. It contains multitudes).

On the last track of the EP, “Sky Line,” the lyrics turn resolute, if not positive. “Shake off the darker thoughts,” Tessier sings, later adding, “one foot in place, in front of the other.” Those footsteps will take the band into Blue Bell Knoll studio in Minneapolis later this year, to record the full-length alongside producer Neil Weir.

Given the strength of this first collection of songs and the resolve of their author, I think it’s well worth Minneapolis music fans’ time and money to support these next steps.

Listen to “The Ledger” below and support the Indiegogo campaign for their next record HERE.

— Ben Zientara, @benzientara