I was a little perturbed when I reviewed the previous Ghost of Helags’ single, ‘Parallel’ by a huge booming synthesiser sound, inspired by The Chemical Brothers, that I didn’t think fitted the song at all but they’re back on track here with a gentler one, ‘Night Summer Waiting’ which was written during a vacation in a small town in Italy and which, they say, emanated from a sense of isolation, claustrophobia and paranoia. Finding a country and its people still gripped by fear of the pandemic they sought to escape from the intensity of their surroundings and turned to music for solace.
They certainly get around; I recall the song before last was prompted by the strange events of a night-time drive between shows in Vienna and Prague.
They soon realised that the only contact with people on this Italian hillside was via the local bar, but everyone wore masks and human interaction was almost impossible. There were no visitors, only a few locals who live there. Yep, it’s what we’re getting used to here, except there’s no boiling sun to go with it.
Consequently, this track emerged as an outcry, a reaction to the pain of being denied human touch and belonging.
So you’d expect it to be miserable, a Leonard Cohen number or at best melancholic but it isn’t. It’s quite upbeat really, starting off as a ballad to simple piano chords, then it switches into a low key dance track with Teresa Woischiski doing her own harmonic backing to a semi-trap beat. There’s no bridge but it tails out into an instrumental ending with a nice touch, what sounds like a door slamming shut, presumably on the pesky virus rather than on their vacation, or on Italy.
The title backs up that assumption, the ‘waiting’ being for the new dawn that everyone hopes is on its way.
There are singers who are adept at this sort of escapist vocal the song demands and then there is Teresa, who is their Queen.
The track, which was released today, will feature on a forthcoming new album being planned by the duo and now for release in 2021. We are promised more information on that album soon.
Twitter: @theghostofhelags