On Holy Ghost/Gold Coast, Midwestern songwriter/producer, Will Phalen, momentarily steps outside the folk rock frame of his band, The Stereo Addicts, to explore the mellower callings of his muse. The album's ten songs were each written and recorded during Will's first months living in Chicago, Illinois. Often composed and committed to tape in the course of one evening, these songs are the product of late nights and quiet places: Will at work in his tiny one-room apartment/studio while the neighbors slumbered next door. Acting alone in this endeavor, Phalen played and sang all the parts on the album: fingerstyle guitar, banjo, accordion, harmonica, toy keyboards, concert bells, stylophone. Those sounds combine with broken drum beats, electronic pulses, and the timbre of household objects to define the record's sonic palette as the songs call forth the ghosts of lost loves, lost youth, and the birth of a new Midwestern aesthetic: one centered on melody and storytelling colliding with flashes of the surreal and the psychedelic.
