Musée Mécanique, Hold This Ghost

[September 24th, 2008]

[ELECTRONIC FOLK] Portland is really beautiful in late September, as summer begins its slow transition into fall: Leaves gently drop to the sidewalk, the sun sets earlier in the evening, and even warmer days end with that chilly breeze that begs for a jacket. The music of Musée Mécanique—the local duo of Sean Ogilvie and Micah Rabwin—exists in a similar realm, inhabiting the transitional space between Old World instrumentation and new technology. So it’s fitting that the group’s debut record, Hold This Ghost, finally enters the world just as the seasons change.

The record is a constant juxtaposition of odd pairings; it’s weathered and organic yet retains a glossy shine, like a classic car with a new coat of wax. It’s an assuredly modern album built on old-fashioned principles; warm, spacey keyboards nestle against washes of oboe and glockenspiel; music-box melodies are set against a crisp, clean palette of stringed instruments.

Written, performed and produced almost entirely by Ogilvie and Rabwin, Hold This Ghost is not as immediate as it is comforting. You can’t quite place where you’ve heard it, but the songs sound oddly familiar—which is to say, it’s a bit of a grower.

Opener “Like Home” is a ruse for what’s ahead, all drum machines pit-pattering and widespread, Technicolor synthesizers. Like the French duo Air, Musée Mécanique creates far-reaching songs out of a host of disparate instruments. “The Things That I Know” begins with fingerpicked guitar before gradually adding layers: a faint, galloping table-tapped beat and sighing clarinet. Lyrically, the songs hang on the edge of nostalgia, equipped with ornate details but never giving up an of-the-moment presence: “She wraps her letter up with fingernails/ and reads them only to herself/ she hangs her walls with bits of cellophane/ what a perfect day.”

In an increasingly placid folk scene, Hold This Ghost works because, well, it doesn’t conform to any norms of the genre. When Ogilvie sings, “I can’t shake off this love that passed,” on “Somehow Bound,” you don’t just feel the weight of his words—you want that change to come, too.