Ghost Ship by Chris Brokaw

Four years after his rock juggernaut PURITAN, Chris Brokaw delivers GHOST SHIP, a landscape meditation (at sea) for vocals and electric guitars.


I set out to make an 8 song statement like 'Desert Shore' or 'Raw Power', but it became a 9 song...something else. I've described it to friends as 'Twin Peaks-ish' but that feels only part right. The songs were written on a 60's Teisco Del Rey electric guitar, set up by the Belgian luthier Flip Scipio with heavy gauge flat wound strings and an .80 gauge low E string tuned down to a low A, which reframes how you play the instrument. I wrote them all quickly in a kind of fever. - Brokaw

"You need to listen to GHOST SHIP from beginning to end. Stand too close to the speaker holding a plastic cup of seltzer with lime and really crank it up. If you have a purple light bulb, screw that into the ceiling fixture, and it will be like seeing Brokaw play the kind of live Brokaw set that puts you on the bottom of the ocean, standing under a transmission tower with a semicircle of effects pedals at its feet. If I'm making this sound vaporous, consider the conversational chords of '8 Or 9 Things', the sharply descending final notes of 'Profile', or the extinction burst of 'Anything Anymore'. Think of echolocation: sonics defining space and distance, time elapsing, the disappearance of something - maybe drugs or a doomed love, possibly in the same form. 'I'm a ghost ship on a long trip / and if you come aboard I'll never run ashore.'" - Mimi Lipson

Chris Brokaw is perhaps best known for his work with the bands Codeine and Come. He has released over two dozen solo albums of instrumental and vocal music since 2002, and played in The New Year, Pullman, Charnel Ground and the Lemonheads. He has scored nine films, most recently 'Crookedfinger' by Julia Halperin and Jason Cortlund, and written for dance and arts associations, most recently 'Lowlands' with Rimi/Imir in Stavangar, Norway. He has recorded and performed as an accompanist to Thurston Moore, Christina Rosenvinge, Rhys Chatham, Jennifer O'Connor, Steve Wynn and GG Allin. Currently he plays in Lupa Citta (with Sarah Black and Jenn Gori), the Martha's Vineyard Ferries (with Bob Weston and Elisha Wiesner) and the Chris Brokaw Rock Band (with Clint Conley and Luther Gray). He continues to perform periodically with Codeine and Come; and will be touring internationally on GHOST SHIP both solo and in his trio.