photo courtesy of BJF Media
Single Reviews of Ghosts of Sunset: “Hide Her Heart,” “She’s Been Coming Around,” and “Fade” (Golden Robot Records)
Ghosts of Sunset, the duo of singer-songwriter John Merchant (from Dutch Henry) and multi-instrumentalist Todd Long (former drummer of The Verve Pipe), are back. A couple years ago, I reviewed the band’s album No Saints in the City. And, while I didn’t review the band’s 2023 album Breathe, I did mention it in the No Saints in the City review. So I suppose they’re not “back,” since they’ve never actually been gone, especially since the first single I’m reviewing, “Hide Her Heart,” was released a year ago, and “She’s Been Coming Around” and “Fade” are both spring 2025 releases. But it is accurate to say that Ghosts of Sunset are back in the Blog.
image courtesy of BJF Media
The band retains its signature sound, a tunefulness that contrasts with the songs’ rough, grainy-feeling production style. In all, it has an ’80s Sunset Strip flavor, when and where rock was raw yet tuneful.
“Hide Her Heart” starts energetically with a steady rhythm and mood-lifting chord progressions slightly contradicting the sad story in the lyrics. A playful guitar part adds to the song’s fun, energetic mood with a tempo that should lead to massive amounts of airplay on a melodic hard rock station.
image courtesy of BJF Media
“She’s Been Comin’ Around” is equally tuneful – it is, after all, a Ghosts of Sunset song – but its music creates a tension early in the song that’s in line with the lyrics but contrasts with some of the pleasant “ah-ahhh” background vocals. The rhythm of the chorus is pure rock ‘n roll songwriting, as if a ’50 rock song had been amped-up with heavy guitar and dropped into an ’80s-’90s guitar rock song. Kind of like Huey Lewis meets The Romantics but with harder rock guitarwork.
image courtesy of BJF Media
“Fade,” the band’s newest single, begins with a riff that sounds a little Bon Jovi-ish at first, though it fades into Merchant’s rough-edged vocals, which border on melancholy throughout the first verse then burst forth with resurgent guitarwork to launch into a chorus that’ll get stuck in your mind after a few listens. The entire song carries a tone befitting the thoughts contained in its chorus’ key line, “I’d rather disappear than to watch you fade.” So, not a feel-good song; rather, one listeners can relate to on a human level, as most of us can recall an experience to which this thought is applicable. In this case, though, perhaps the tunefulness of this song can help turn such memories into reminiscences.
Taken together, Ghosts of Sunset’s three post-Breathe singles all showcase the band’s song-driven rock style, covering a fair bit of real estate in the raw melodic guitar rock neighborhood. It’s always a pleasure to hear a new GoS song; if you’ve not heard of the band before, be sure to check them out. And if you’re already a Ghosts of Sunset fan, be sure you haven’t missed any of these three singles.
Geoff Wilbur's Music Blog 