Classic Album: Holy Ghost!, Holy Ghost!
DFA, 2011
“We really didn’t know what the fuck we were doing,” blurts Alex Frankel, one half of Brooklyn synth pop duo, Holy Ghost! Nicholas Millhiser, roundly agrees: “We were both making it up as we went along!”
Debut album time for this pair meant learning on the job, and enlisting the help of anyone sucked into their orbit. And that started with DFA co-founder, James Murphy.
As session players for his and Tim Goldsworthy’s label, they had his ear, and played him a demo of a track they’d been tinkering with. That was Hold On. Liking what he heard, he sat in to mix the record, and give it the extra boost it needed.
The track blew up. And DJ tours, remixes, and EPs followed. But, for their LP, they needed more bodies in the room.
Producer Juan MacLean swapped skillsets, as dearly departed drum god, Jerry Fuchs, thumped tubs. Other vital players included mix engineer, Eric Broucek. And, more than most, album co-producer Chris Zane, who added much meat to the bones of any new demos the band cooked up at home, and on the road.
“We had a lot of help,” says Millhiser. “Way more so than anything else that came after. James and Tim were monumentally instrumental and influential from afar – their general production ethos was the blueprint for this record.
“But, Chris Zane, whose approach could not have been more different from James’ and Tim’s, was instrumental in helping us finish, and really encouraged us to get out of our own heads and just make stuff.”
That “stuff’ would be 10 tracks of hip-hop influenced sampling, club-banging and DJ-ready dance and electro and power pop synth, loose in form, and less linear than anything they’d attempted in bands before.
Frankel wrote lyrics, taking a little swagger from Talking Heads and Stevie Nicks, and worked keys. As Millhiser took on the bulk of the guitars, basses, ‘programmy’ synth stuff and engineering.
“We were so green,” he says. “But, it really felt like we were learning something new every day.”
“A lot came together at the last minute. When I look back at unable-to-let-go-micro-managing, I find that the stuff we obsess over really doesn’t matter. It sort of disappears, and sometimes you even forget what it was you were worried about.
“But, going back and listening to the record we nearly released, we were 100% right. All the last minute tweaks really made a huge difference. Alex re-did 80% of the vocals, and they are light years better. And the mixes feel more defined and more fun.”