"Let Me Drink" -- Song Review

"Let Me Drink" by Ghost & Door Party was recently reviewed by Devon Jackson through MusicXray.  Devon Jackson has written about music and film for a variety of publications--from Entertainment Weekly and The Village Voice to Rolling Stone and Details. He is also the author of Conspiranoia! and currently the editor of Santa Fean magazine. Here is the review:

After Charles Klamut opens with a very gentle guitar (that, in its chords, resembles Creed’s “Arms Wide Open”), his partner, Jessamyn Luong, follows him with what sounds like an (even gentler) ocarina, giving this song a kind of, at first, Irish folk song tunefulness. Klamut’s voice is extremely rich, sort of like the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan—only minus the booze-and-cigs gruffness. Luong also chimes in with her mandolin—and instrumentally, that’s it. Luong remains more or less in the background, vocally and instrumentally, complementing Klamut’s high-ish, slightly cracking, somewhat gravelly voice perfectly. She comes in ever so faintly, almost like a friendly ghost. There’s something of early Fleetwood Mac at play here—along with countless indie rock post-folk singer-songwriters and acoustic duos. But these two are even more spare than their compatriots. And Klamut doesn’t really have the strongest of voices. But that only drives home the tenuousn ess of the lyrics, which are at once semi-declarative and uncertain: “Let me . . . drink . . . go . . . see . . . live.” They are equal parts seeking (life, enlightenment, joy, hardship, darkness, surprise) and supplicative. It’s tempting to read these words through the prism of Klamut being a priest and Luong being a longtime Christian, but that’d be typecasting. And unfair. If anything, their faith (which seems to gain its strength from its doubt) and their questioning essence makes their music all the more impressive and unique.