Search - Jeffrey Foucault :: Ghost Repeater

Ghost Repeater
Jeffrey Foucault
Ghost Repeater
Genres: Folk, Pop, Rock
 
  •  Track Listings (11) - Disc #1

Holed up in Iowa City for the coldest week of the year, Jeffrey Foucault teamed with legendary blues guitar player and producer Bo Ramsey (Greg Brown, Lucinda Williams) to create Ghost Repeater, a country and blues album a...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Jeffrey Foucault
Title: Ghost Repeater
Members Wishing: 7
Total Copies: 0
Label: Signature Sounds Recordingss
Original Release Date: 1/1/2006
Re-Release Date: 5/23/2006
Genres: Folk, Pop, Rock
Styles: Contemporary Folk, Singer-Songwriters, Folk Rock
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 701237129822

Synopsis

Album Description
Holed up in Iowa City for the coldest week of the year, Jeffrey Foucault teamed with legendary blues guitar player and producer Bo Ramsey (Greg Brown, Lucinda Williams) to create Ghost Repeater, a country and blues album at the crossroads between love and lament, exploring the hopefulness of new love and the seasickness of contemporary American living. Ghost Repeaters are empty radio stations scattered around the country to re-broadcast demographically tailored playlists, endless echoes of American market culture, from thousands of miles away. Epidemic sameness, big-box stores, and the retail news cycle of ghost prisoners and God on Our Side create the context in which the songs on Ghost Repeater unfold a story of love and uncertainty. Written over the course of a year in which Foucault married, Ghost Repeater juxtaposes a personal narrative of hope and joyfulness against the wider story of the times, in a series of travelogues and dreamscapes. Words like bloom and fade, truth and mercy, dream and memory recur through the album to create a sort of grammar, a palette of colors that Foucault and Ramsey merge with dark washes of electric guitar and vocals hushed or plaintive, in a visionary portrait of modern Americana. It?s a natural pairing ? Ramsey?s cool economy of phrase the perfect compliment to Foucault?s elegant lines and weatherbeaten drawl ? and the recording itself something of a homecoming, with Foucault traveling back to the Midwest from Massachusetts where he?s lived the past few years, and bringing the songs he?d written home to record them with Ramsey?s longtime collaborators. In addition to Bo Ramsey?s inimitable sound Foucault has the backing of Rick Cicalo and Steve Hayes (Greg Brown) on rhythm, along with special guest appearances by Iowa legend Dave Moore on harp and accordion, Eric Heywood (Son Volt, Richard Buckner) on pedal steel, and Kris Delmhorst on backing vocals. Against the broadcast echoes of an America long gone, Foucault lays out the particulars of love in a country contending with its own ghost. In songs of love and empire, dream and memory, Ghost Repeater delivers the honesty of country, the rawboned desperation of blues, and the simplicity of folk to achieve a document that?s timeless and poignant.

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CD Reviews

Worth repeating
Anne La Mont | MI USA | 07/21/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)

"Jeffrey Foucault is new to me. His sound on this disc catches at my heart and ear from start to finish. With a mix of folk, blues and country music, these songs have a brooding theme of travel but the bigger theme is one this indepentant music listener resonates with. I learned that Ghost Repeaters are empty radio stations that play demographically profiled playlists to wide sections of America. Echoes of American market culture from thousands of miles away are invading our airways the way epidemic sameness, bigbox stores, and faux news cycles through every state. The songs on Ghost Repeater reveal a story of love and uncertainty. Foucault's words reflect the poles of "one part love and one part grief" (#6) capturing his recent marriage and his delight in that to the heartache he feels looking at our country. Treat yourself well and listen to these songs"
Repeater more country than folk....
Crocodile man | 06/10/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)

"First let me state that I think Jeffrey Foucault is astonishingly gifted not only as a guitarist, but also as a singer/songwriter. That said his latest offering Ghost repeater is, well, erring a little too close to a more polished Nashville sound than I myself care for. The desperate spare arrangements of "Stripping Cane" and "Miles from the Lightning" are replaced with a much more 'country' set-up, fuller sound rounded out with a bigger range of musicians. Think "Devils and Dust" as opposed to "Nebraska". If you like country this is probably one of the best albums you'll buy this year because the writing is so strong, but I just can't help wandering what this album would sound like stripped back to the bare essentials. I think there's just a little too much pedal steel in the mix and the whole album sounds a lot more compressed and produced than previous albums. Just my opinion folks - would still reccomend to listeners - but with a cautionary note to prior fans of his more bluesy folk offerings."
Incredible Musician -- DO NOT MISS!
Whitney Ware | Independence, Oregon | 10/17/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)

"I don't usually care to share my opinions, but I have to break my normal silence and rave about this musician. I'll agree with a previous reviewer that the album "Ghost Repeater" is a little more polished than his earlier two albums, and that it makes for a slightly weaker finished product. But this young musician is absolutely astonishing. His lyrics are beautiful and thought provoking, and his haunting music gets you in the ears and in the gut. I don't know what genre you'd consider his work -- Folk? Blues? Bluegrass? Americana? Country? Forget genres -- this album, and all of Jeffrey Foucault's previous works, are must-haves for anyone who enjoys truly American music."