After the calm and sublime People Used ToLive Here, SPOOK THE HORSES, hailingfrom Wellington, New Zealand deliver theirferocious new album, Empty Body. Withdistortion levels cranked up, tempoes spedup and songs condensed and stripped downto the bare, ugly essentials, Empty Bodycomes as a brutal wake-up call within therampant covid-19 fatigue, and anunexpected surprise in almost every regard.„We've always been both a heavy and aquiet band. An entire album of our prettier,more bittersweet inclinations demands areply of our most aggressive and confrontational.The pendulum must swing back the other way“, comments multi-instrumentalist Callum Gay.Imagine: if band members can rotate between instrument positions within the band, because everyband member can play every instrument, then this must imply a seldom degree of freedom andmutual musical understanding... something that most bands could only dream of. SPOOK THEHORSES are such a band. Maybe this multi-instrumentalism and virtuosity also explains the vastmusical territory that is explored between the band's 4 albums: while 2011's debut album Brighterwas defined by sweet post-rock crescendos, 2015's Rainmaker was a much heavier affair. PeopleUsed To Live Here“ (2017) created an atmosphere of quiet desolation, raw and real, desperate andunsettling: the post-apocalyptic soundtrack to abandoned places, where people used to live, at onepoint in time, long ago.
