Ghostwoman - Welcome to the Civilized World Ghostwoman

There is no reason for GHOSTWOMAN’s fourth album to exist. Welcome to the Civilized World is born to a broken world; a corrupt inheritance – Evan Uschenko and Ille van Dessel are under no illusions about its futility – and yet, this thing is alive. It’s an allergic reaction to the times we are living in: a welt that screams to be itched, the purging of a modern sickness they could no longer stomach. Beyond rationality, this record came from a place of gut feeling and a lack of any other option. Hell may have cracked wide open – but GHOSTWOMAN will not go quietly.

A head-on collision between the switchblade rust of Uschenko’s guitars and van Dessel’s caustic drum beats sees GHOSTWOMAN march on toward a shared oblivion - Welcome to the Civilized World is an album to be a pure distillation of their shared vision. From its earliest sketch to its final form, the only people to touch it were GHOSTWOMAN themselves.

The meaning of the album is inseparable from its meaninglessness. As Uschenko puts it: “The album is inspired by the absurdity of human behaviour and the circus that is life: sometimes feels like being in a room with no floor – that’s where a lot of these songs come from.” After losing friends to suicide over the past year, the suspension of disbelief required to wade through the everyday had dissipated. If there is any meaning at all to Welcome to the Civilized World, it is simply to keep going: there is no other choice. 

Musically, GHOSTWOMAN are a sharper beast than ever: hypnotic spells of psych-grunge, decaying Americana and instrumental locked-horns. Uschenko, who presides over the vocals, insists they are not important. Much of the lyrics are nonsense, not written as much as abstractly sketched to feel out the shape of the music itself – but even in Uschenko’s dream grammar, the force and feeling are no less potent.

The band’s process is intuitive rather than calculated; sounds are made in a chain reaction to one another. “5 Gold Pieces”, with its filthy guitars and snarling, livewire vocals was recorded as a test after they bought a tape machine. The first shot is often the best, and that test is what you hear today. Everything they used to record is gone. “We buy old equipment or instruments which have a bunch of life and soul in it until we’ve used it all up, and then sell it again so we can buy something else,” explains Van Dessel. 

Welcome to the Civilized World is not concerned with making music  for an audience, not for the music industry and not for any particular point other than the thrill of it. Nothing matters, we are all doomed, the sun will swallow the earth and our efforts turn to dust anyway. The band will continue to play as the ship goes down.