Carly Cosgrove – The Cleanest of Houses Are Empty | Album Review
/
Wax Bodega
There are many ways a ghost can haunt a house. They could float through a wall unannounced to scare someone investigating a flickering light or stalk around their once-home, watching the current inhabitants but hesitating to appear. Maybe they are more malevolent and are seeking revenge, or perhaps they’re more mischievous and just want to move someone’s jewelry off a dresser and onto a bedside table. Despite various discrepancies in ghostly behavior, one commonality often cited is the appearance of a ghost re-enacting a scene, and not just re-enacting it once, but over and over, like they’re stuck on a loop. In some stories, they’re stuck in the monotony of the day – cooking, entering a room, pacing a hallway – forever.
I’ve often felt incredibly sympathetic towards those stories, the idea of someone doomed to repeat a moment of their life over and over without any semblance of recognition that they’re trapped. However, there’s also a coldly enticing side to it, a protective force around you blocking the outside and keeping you in. I remember a moment in my life when I was staring at ceilings and watching spiders build webs around me while I ignored the passage of time. I felt like those ghosts too.
Despite how inescapable these loops can be and how tantalizing it can be to haunt your own life, it ultimately isn’t sustainable – Philadelphia’s Carly Cosgrove makes that clear in their sophomore album, The Cleanest of Houses Are Empty. As a band that has always been concerned with fixing the unfixable and obsessively analyzing ways to change, their latest release delves deeper into the abyss of self-reflection than they ever have before. Through 11 songs, the trio brave waves of isolation, frustration, and contemplation with instrumentation that has so much kinetic force it borders on a live recording.
Something immediately apparent in any Carly Cosgrove song is how singer and guitarist Lucas Naylor not only sings but performs his lyrics with the emphatic nature of the instrument he’s holding in his hands. Naylor uses rhyme patterns like chords and creates melodies from otherwise absurd metaphors. The band’s specific lexicon and near-punchline deliveries are trademark signifiers of any Carly Cosgrove song. The album’s first single, “You Old Dog,” offers an immediate example, opening with a promise and question.
This time, I will turn my life around and do it right
And this time, I will turn my life around and do it. Right?
By establishing this premise and then immediately flipping it on its head with a minor change to the punctuation, the band deploys a lyrical sleight of hand usually reserved for card games. With these lines, Naylor summarizes the major motivations of The Cleanest of Houses Are Empty: breaking a habit with bolt cutters and then regretting that you broke them, all underscored by a twinge of unrecognized hope.
The fourth track, "Here's a Fork," is led by Helen Barsz's heartbeat bassline and kicks the lyricism into overdrive as the words sharpen into an interrogation. The barrage of self-reflection stacks up on itself, eventually toppling over on the final question, "Can I make right on an old light? / Try to be who I said when you met me?” before shifting into a repeated refrain, “I wish I could love the way you test me.” It’s a melancholy admittance and perhaps the answer to the litany of questions aimed at a familiar face or, somberly, the mirror. Naylor reiterates the question again, punctuating the song with a stated, actionable version instead of looking for an answer – “Wanna make right on an old light / Try to be who I said when you met me,” the opposite of the subtle switch found in “You Old Dog.” For a moment, on its final hum, the song breathes again, the music seemingly catching its breath while the lyrics sigh in relief at a glimmer of recovery.
Past the crowd-surfable “Fluff My Pillow” and the crowd-chantable “Zoloft” is the album’s sudden shift. The introduction of “Random Dancing” is interruptive and declarative; it jolts the album’s narrative into a new setting. Instead of a static reflection relegated to unwashed comforters and pill bottles on counters, the song moves us outside, with lyrics about doing whatever “the dance” entails. Maybe the dance is trying to get to work on time or awkwardly sitting on a barstool while talking to friends who were previously locked out of misery’s trap. The song’s shift to a different setting widens the scope, like when the aspect ratio of a movie suddenly changes, and the sound accompanies it. This track is the biggest Carly Cosgrove has ever sounded, with a chorus made to be chanted and a guitar tone that reminds me why we call the instrument an ax.
It’s largely understood that hauntings end when a ghost’s “unfinished business” is complete. What’s more applicable here is the idea that the haunting will end after fully breaking out of the loop. The penultimate track, “The Impact of this Exit,” is the snapping point of this constant replay; the self-confrontation needed to stop a previously unstoppable cycle. Musically, this is the most tangibly emo song on the album, weaving melancholy twinkly riffs over rolling percussion with raw honesty placed at the forefront. As the conversational lyrics of the song mount into an argument and begin to boil over, Tyler Kramer’s drumming rolls along, building steadily with the words until Naylor admits, “I don't wanna be your winner.” Kramer then breaks from the established rhythm and drops in with a loud, hollow crack from the drumkit. The haunting is over.
The album ends with “North Star Bar,” a melancholy song punctuated by deep breaths and the sharp cry of a trumpet. The song itself seems to come from beyond as it details a life never lived through a place never visited. It only exists in imagination, or at least hangs from above like a star. It’s quieter than the other songs and implies an opportunity to sing along with an audience who, like a ghost, isn’t there either. Naylor leaves the listener with one final confession, “The world I know is not the one I hoped it was, But it was there.” It’s a pensive conclusion, equal parts disappointed and begrudgingly hopeful.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how many years a ghost had been trapped re-enacting what once was, or how many people watched on as they grimly re-lived their life. What matters is when the loop finally stops, what stopped it, and how it changed them – this is what matters most on The Cleanest of Houses Are Empty too.
Caro Alt’s (she/her) favorite thing in the world is probably collecting CDs. Caro is from New Orleans, Louisiana and spends her time not sorting her CD collection even though she really, really needs to.
