The Ephemerals don’t plan on remaining a one-hit wonder. Even though the name of the UK-based soul band might suggest the opposite, they have just released their second record within less than a year. Their debut »Nothin Is Easy« did not achieve a commercial breakthrough, but it came with a great vocals discovery in the shape of Wolfgang »Wolf« Valbrun. »Chasin Ghosts« is once again adhering to the kind of sound that Daptone Records helped popularizing in the early noughties, releasing artists like Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley Funk, jazz and soul. It’s all produced in the right amount of roughness by Rob Jones, part of the Gene Dudley Group from London. And that’s exactly the surrounding from which guitarist and band leader Hillman Mondegreen recruited the vast majority of the Ephemerals. His vocalist, on the other hand, he met in Wolfgang Walbrun’s adopted city: Paris. The New York-born singer knows how to lift the painfully melancholy tracks (in particular, the single »You’ll Never See Me Cry« is terrific) with the help of his incredible 70s-soul voice to greater heights. Not to forget the strings which give these eleven tracks a sublime, yet never mawkish note. Hardly ever have we heard such perfectly fitted arrangements in 21st century soul.
Chasin Ghosts
