Hospital Ships - Lonely Twin [Album Review]

ACL Satellite Sets

Early fans of Death Cab for Cutie/ Ben Gibbard's vocal stylings rejoice - Hospital Ships is here to reignite that passion for pop you once felt. Led by former Shearwater member Jordan Geiger and accompanied by a gaggle of talented musicians (including Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg and Thor Harris), sophomore album Lonely Twin offers a much denser and instrumentally interesting experience than the essentially solo Geiger first release Oh, Ramona. The song "Galaxies" is where the comparison to DCFC really shines through, but there are many intricacies that allow these songs to stand on their own. Distortion and pitch bending lend a lo-fi quality to a well-recorded mix, tying back in to the sound that started Hospital Ships while allowing it to grow up and evolve. Released on Graveface Records June 7, the group recently performed some of the new songs on the ACL Satellite Sessions, available streaming here, to hear for yourself.

Although currently on tour around the US, Geiger hails from Lawrence, KS, and has played in The Appleseed Cast and Minus Story, both well-respected Lawrence bands. Geiger's goal for this album was to make it more of a collective collaboration, gathering performances by Lucas "Juice" Oswald, Kimberly Burke, Kevin Schneider, Nathan Wilder, Whitney Flinn, Brian Phillips, Spencer Goertz-Giffen, Josh Adams, Evan Saathoff, Nick Christus, Chris Crisci, Andrew Connor, Mike Nolte, John Congleton, Katlyn Conroy, and more. Noting that there are at least four different drummers on the album in an in-depth interview with Spinner, Geiger also revealed that the record was ready for over a year before officially released. On tour with Shearwater, Geiger didn't feel he could properly support it until that was complete. However, if you managed to catch Shearwater live within that time period, you likely saw Hospital Ships open the show, with Geiger and members of Shearwater and Wye Oak jamming.

While "Reprise" is one of the least lyrically inspiring songs on the new album, the music video released for it more than makes up for it. Including Geiger's break-dancing brother, baton-twirling aunt and tricycle-riding father, the footage was all taken from his grandpa's 8mm film archives. Like the album itself, the video shows both a personal side (his family) but without revealing too much about Geiger himself (we only see one shot of him as a toddler at the very end). It is this exact motif woven deliberately throughout the record that gives the listener a sense of almost satisfaction. In "Phantom Limb" (no relation to The Shins' song of the same title), Geiger laments "Once my lover, now my friend/ you are my phantom limb." - something that should be there but is not quite, or used to be there but is no longer. Luckily, this absence makes the heart grow fonder, in that you want to hear more of the album to fill any holes, and Hospital Ships fills it with plucky guitar riffs, gorgeous duets and an ever-evolving drive towards a catchy chorus.

Lucky for us, Hospital Ships will moor here at the end of July with an in-store performance at Waterloo Records. In the meantime, grab a free download of one of Lonely Twin's tracks, "Anyone Everyone" here.

Hospital Ships: [myspace]