- James Lees’ Twin Peaks riffing, piano-driven, lockdown project returns with a second slab of moody, instrumental rocking. Slightly less obviously derivative of Angelo Badalamenti’s synth-noir soundtrack to David Lynch’s cult TV series than the 2021 EP Dark Moon, it ranges further afield in its emotional colours and stylistic conceits. Despite the title, however, you’ll find no less dark wonder in My Neon.

Lees uses his ivory-stroking piano skills to provide rhythmic patterns that usually act as a structure, something to hang every successive element of a Ghostwoods song off. It’s a bit like an alternative to drumming and Lees, of course, has spent most of his career being a drummer in bands like Silver Sircus. He doesn’t always employ the keyboard in that fashion, as you’ll notice in opener Dreamless, where the rhythmic pattern dissolves into a jittery oscillation, before drowning altogether in a sea of shimmering ambience; I guess that’s the bright, shining neon of the title.

Lees isn’t only a Lynch fan, a fact made clear, repeatedly across this record and immediately obvious on second cut, Terminal Bliss: it has an inexorable, reverberant, even pulverising beat, contrasting with the soft, sweet sax licks. Ghostwoods is wearing its Swans’-appreciation on its sleeve here. Across the six minute run-time, however, it becomes something else, as Andrew Saragossi loses his mind and the sax comes within an inch of self-destruction. In the final twenty seconds the beat vanishes, with the sax desperately screeching as though struggling to breathe. We’re firmly back in Badalamenti land, although it’s a different one as the music pays homage to Bill Pullman’s club psychosis in Lost Highway.

Saturnine is unexpectedly poised and elegant, its 3/4 beat on the keys and the plaintive acoustic strumming of Karl O’Shea are like being present at an ethereal ball, revenants and wraiths quietly whirling around the dancefloor. For some reason, maybe not a very good one, it reminds me of the theme from Rosemary’s Baby; it could just be the waltz rhythm, which is probably not enough of an excuse - my bad.

Liminal is another big number and again allows the ambience to rub shoulders with a piano vignette. You could just about call this what the kids refer to as neo-classical and it’s a reminder that Lees has a fairly big bag of genres he likes to dip into. From ambient, to post-rock -Liminal itself features the one-giant-crescendo arc that is a key feature of that genre- to folk, post-punk and let’s not forget the jazz background of the players here, which is often audible, like an uncanny echo. It’ll have you reaching for comparisons to Bohren & der Club of Gore and The Necks, no doubt.

The biggest piece here is Brighter Now, beginning with echoing piano chords and murmuring clarinet. It’s not quite as mind-bending as The Necks at their most psychedelic, but there’s something kinda Chris Abrahams’ about all this. At the very least, it’d be sure to have people shouting “this isn’t jazz!” if anyone dared to call it that. The intensity and volume of noise increases with Mark Angel’s shredded guitar fuzz putting us back in post-rock again, even though we never quite lose the dreamy quality that pervades all nine and a half minutes.

The restrained electric guitar and the most Badalamenti synths you’ll hear here make for an archetypal Lynch soundtrack sound in the little closer, Terminus. I think James Lees is taking the opportunity to remind everyone that, despite the greater experimentation on the new record, he still remembers what brought folks here in the first place. The only thing that’s not here is the sadly missed Julee Cruise.

My Neon lets us know that from Washington State to Jinbara Country and Mt. Nebo, there’s more than one Ghostwoods. Watch out for the Black Lodge in the one and don’t drive your motorbike too fast through the other and there’s plenty of shadowy splendour, awe and wonder to be had, traipsing through both. It’s all done in darkness under the neon moon, or as James Lees refers to it, from the front porch of his recording studio, My Neon.

- Chris Cobcroft.