Q&A: Romantic, Honest and Reflective, Spirit Ghost’s Alex Whitelaw Dives Into New Album & Music Video “Makes Me Sick”
ALEX WHITELAW’S NEWEST ALBUM WILL HAVE YOU MELT INTO HIS MUSIC — Packed with dreamy, wavy instrumentals, and guitar riffs, Spirit Ghost’s new album, Melting Right Before Your Eyes, is an indie feel-good record with energetic undertones of surf rock. Originally started in 2012 as a bedroom pop project, Spirit Ghost developed into a much more distinct sound with various influences, from The Strokes to the Osees, as well as ’60s music altogether.
Hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, Whitelaw embraces his favorite project yet with Melting Right Before Your Eyes. Beginning solo in his previous works, he plays alongside with a band in the newest March release — Whitelaw on guitar and vocals, Billy Hickey on drums, John Bergin on bass/violin, and lended vocals from Sarah Addi. The collaboration creates a much more mature sound, yet keeps the beautiful lo-fi sound that garage rock is known for.
The record is a fun psychedelic rock frenzy that’s nostalgic of the ’60s guitar sounds and tones mixed with contemporary indie rock. Fun screams are weaved in with warm synths, paired with lovely sentimental lyrics that are perfect for the hopeless romantics.
Read more below to get immersed into Melting Right Before Your Eyes with Spirit Ghost.
LUNA: Thank you for meeting with me today! First off, tell me a little bit about yourself and where you’re from.
SPIRIT GHOST: Yeah, sure. My name is Alex and I’m from Providence, Rhode Island — well, just outside of Providence. I’m actually the one who writes everything for Spirit Ghost, but this most recent album I have a band playing with me.
LUNA: Okay, nice, nice. I listened to some of your discography. I really enjoyed it because I'm super into surf rock and garage rock. I don't know if you listen to King Gizzard?
SPIRIT GHOST: Thank you. Yes, I do!
LUNA: That’s awesome. I definitely heard that influence and sound within your music. Who would you say your main musical influences or inspirations are?
SPIRIT GHOST: I really like The Strokes, The Kinks, a lot of early ’60s stuff. I really like Ty Segall, the Osees, Angel Olsen — just a bunch of guitar stuff.
LUNA: Nice, I love the Osees! Did you always know that you wanted to do music?
SPIRIT GHOST: No, I had no idea. Honestly, I'm struggling with that right now because I don't know if I want to do it anymore. I don't know, I liked it for a very long time. And I've had it for a while and I’m just getting older. I'll probably still do it, I just don't think I'm gonna do it to the degree that I've been doing it previously. I just kind of want to focus on other things. When it's just you doing everything, you don't really have help with the logistical aspects of it — it starts to become all-consuming. So you can't really focus on anything else other than this. And then if you don't make enough money, [you have to] work a full-time job on top of this — [it] becomes a never-ending cycle of stuff.
LUNA: The album was self-released, right? Speaking of the album, congrats on its release. How do you feel now that it’s out?
SPIRIT GHOST: Thank you! Yeah, everything I’ve done is self-released. I feel good. I feel like it's something that I was very proud of. And I don't know. I think it's the best songs I've ever written personally, so I'm just kind of excited for people to hear them. I feel like people seem to really like it so far. So that's been nice.
LUNA: I really liked it. I loved the beachy, psychedelic sounds because I love surf rock, and I totally heard all those influences you named earlier. What do you think makes this new album different from your previous works?
SPIRIT GHOST: I think having other people play on this album immediately bumped up the production value. I think it's the first time I've ever had an album properly produced. So I think it just sounds a lot more full and rich, in the way that I always hoped the other stuff would but then it always kind of fell short. It's also the first time I went for it in terms of paying for production value. I was very happy with the way that it turned out. I think it sounds really nice.
LUNA: You wrote all these songs on the album yourself. How does your songwriting process go? What comes first, the melodies or the lyrics? How's that process for you?
SPIRIT GHOST: I think it's different every time. Sometimes I'll have a line kicking around in my head for a while. I kind of am always touching my guitar, playing something, then I'll just start humming a melody. And then sometimes I'll record a whole song in GarageBand and be like, “Well, that sucked. It was a huge waste of time.” And then sometimes I do it. I'm like, “Oh, I think that's going to be a good one.” It's a total crapshoot every time.
LUNA: What was your favorite part about making this album?
SPIRIT GHOST: I really liked it because It was also the first time that I recorded with other people, and we got to perform the songs live for the recording. So it's not like no one did the guitar and then someone didn't go in and do the drums over the guitar. It's all of us actually playing together in real time, which I just hadn't done before. So that was really nice and fun for me. Recording is always fun.
LUNA: So would you say you appreciate having more help on this album compared to your other stuff?
SPIRIT GHOST: I think it just sounds better for that reason. I think it sounds not so stiff and not so rigid. I had been playing with this band for a long time, so I feel like it made sense to record with them. It just sounds like we've been playing together for a while, and that's always nice. You don't want to sound like you just played together for the first time. I think that's the thing. I always really kind of struggle with the identity of the band because it's a thing that I started, and I play all the stuff on all the previous recordings … drums, bass, guitar, and [vocals]. I never want to not acknowledge that there's people on this album with me.
LUNA: I saw and listened to both of the interlude instrumentals on the album. Is there a meaning behind “I” and “II” within the whole record?
SPIRIT GHOST: No, it was like a thing I wanted to check off my bucket list of what I think an album should be. I kind of miss the days when albums had skits or throwaway musical interludes. They serve as a transition between maybe two different tones or themes. The first three songs definitely have their cohesiveness and then there's this transition to what I think is the center point of the album.
LUNA: Could you tell me about the filming and creative process for the music video for “Makes Me Sick”?
SPIRIT GHOST: Yeah. I had just seen the movie Men by Alex Garland. He's [directed] three movies. I think one is Ex Machina and the other is Annihilation, which I really like. Men had a couple of things that I thought were super creepy and cool, like the shadowy figure running at somebody from a very faraway distance. In Annihilation, there's this thing where people get turned back into nature when they die — it's pretty horrific. So I thought that that was kind of cool. And then I just have always really liked the idea that ’80s slasher films lend themselves to low-budget things, like the original Halloween and some other stuff. So I had all that stuff kind of running through my mind. And I was like, “Well, it'd be cool if … this creepy hand offered somebody a flower and then infected them with a disease” (laughs).
LUNA: Any future plans? Now that the album is out, do you plan on playing any shows or touring?
SPIRIT GHOST: No, to be honest, it's just too expensive. And again, it's just starting to become too much work to try and do by myself all the time. So I feel like I'm just kind of letting it be. I was listening to this interview with the person who made Japanese Breakfast and she was saying how she just stopped at a certain point because she said they had been doing it for a while and thought that it's not really catching on in a way that's sustainable. And I think that's kind of where I'm at. So I'm just not gonna keep doing it in the same way. I think I'm gonna try different things for a while. I want to make more music videos, and I want to do more stuff with video and video production. I've just always been passionate about that. But for now, the album’s out and hopefully people will listen to it or find it, and if not, that's fine too.
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