Twin Ghost Dog Howl - a Halo for a …..

​Twin Ghost Dog Howl

a Halo for a …..
self-released; 2016

3.8 out of 5

By Matt Jensen

The story behind Twin Ghost Dog Howl aka Bekah Fly is worth reading. I’m not going to waste precious space in this review explaining but I would recommend reading about it on her Bandcamp page.

All the recordings on a Halo for a ….. were made with a phone and as you could guess it's incredibly lo-fi sounding. I’d be lying If I said the sound was ideal. There were occasions that I really wanted more clarity especially within the vocals instead of boxy frequencies.

​That being said some of the lo-fi aesthetics work in favor of the songs because of the experimental nature. I was so impressed with what she could do with a minimal gear I found myself wondering what she might be capable of if she was working in a professional studio.

Her music is sparse. It involves a guitar, a loop pedal, distortion and her vocals. Sometimes she sings, sometimes she talks as if she is reading poetry. All things considered I found her style original and sparse which I think is a hard thing to do this day and age. 

She opens with “what about the frequency of a baby crow wolf?” which is a lo-fi psychedelic track. A simple picked guitar progression gets sped up on occasion and her voice sometimes gets altered mid-sentence. She mixes up vocal styles but it works. She declares “what about the frequency of a baby crow wolf? : im lit up like desert skies / i fall in love with geminis / i roll the dice.”

“Love u most/Kill u best” is one of the catchiest songs. You can hear how good of a singing voice she has even though it’s distorted. Some of the manipulations were quite inventive. I thought most of them worked really well. 

“If jesus was a wolf (id howl/id fuck in the snow)” has a downright soulful vocal performance with ambiguous lyrics that go down the rabbit hole. She has more success with “Grandpa (little mental skies)” which was another inspired track. 

​These songs are deceptively cohesive once you spend some time with them. I felt like there is some mad genius at work here the more I listened to these songs. In fact her style and songs are definitely  “growers.” These aren’t palatable pop songs but there are some interesting things going on here. Stick with it.

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