The Ghost of Helags – Mary (single)

They certainly get around. And live dangerously. Previous songs have been conceived during an eerie night-time drive from Vienna to Prague and in a Covid infested Italian village. This latest effort from The Ghost of Helags was partly written in Berlin, which is now their home, at least part of the time, during yet another lockdown in the Chinese Year of the Mask but ‘Mary’ was actually recorded during a session in a border town cottage in the Giant Mountains district, a wild national park area on the border between Poland and the Czech Republic; one which was virtually a ghost town as guess what was looming? You got it.

Everything felt surreal, they say. “We´d combine recording at the cottage with long day walks in the gloomy forests, and recording sessions at night. Eventually we had to escape the area because of the country closing its borders, so we drove back to Berlin through the night and managed to cross the border at the last second”.

So it is not surprising perhaps that ‘Mary’ “details the craziness which exists in the head and mind”. Mama, weere all crazee now.

Does any of that craziness come across in the song, or the surrealism for that matter? It sure does, while John Alexander Ericson packs in even more synthesiser effects and drum loops than usual and Teresa Woischiski sounds, well ghostly. And the funny thing is that for all the weirdness you can dance to it.

I wasn’t really hooked on previous singles (all from their forthcoming debut album I expect), namely ‘Parallel’ and ‘Chemistry’ but they are right back on form with this one.

Incidentally, I don’t know why the promotional image is of Teresa’s right buttock (for that is who I assume it may belong to) but I don’t hear anyone complaining.

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