PREMIERE: Ranch Ghost Shows Off Their Melodic Stomp on “Turfin”

The Nashville group’s debut LP “Lookin” is out July 1 via Rough Beast
PREMIERE: Ranch Ghost Shows Off Their Melodic Stomp on “Turfin”

The Nashville group’s debut LP “Lookin” is out July 1 via Rough Beast

Words: FLOOD Staff

photo by Ashley Boyd Jones

May 05, 2016

2016. Ranch Ghost, cred Ashley Boyd Jones

As many would expect from the home of the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville’s cozy womb is not limited to nurturing country crooners and their slide guitars. While that twangy flavor tends to marinate straight to the bone for Tennessee-bred musicians, Ranch Ghost not only embraces its city of conception, but incorporates that authentic Southern style into a blues-meets-surf-punk roux for their debut single “Turfin.”

Out of the pulsing percussion and plunky guitar melodies comes singer Joshua Meador’s confident ramblin’ that abandons traditional country folklore in exchange for poignant lyricism that reaches oh-so-closely towards political censure.

The album is tied together with the same fuzzed-out, jangly ambience provided by “Turfin.” Written solely by the Ranch Ghosters themselves and recorded live with Mitch Jones, Lookin’s vibe is the aural equivalent to filling your parent’s garage with sand, sun, and surf and turning the amp up several notches after your mom yells for you to keep it down. Perhaps not nearly as injected with angst as that scene would suggest, it’s doubtful this quintet will regard any sort of restraint while performing Lookin in all its chaotic, bluesy swagger.

Meadors describes the new tune as such:

A guided tour of the negative states of mind with direction to the beaming bright light of right now, the tale of turfin’. A dream of transcendence, into the pleasantly present.