SONG OF THE DAY: "There Are Ghosts" by Karate

Once upon a time, the brilliant Frank Turner randomly recommended the album The Bed Is In the Ocean by a band named Karate on his Twitter page. Now, I had never heard of Karate, but considering Frank Turner is an infallible musical genius whose every word I take as sacred, I sought out this album and gave it a listen.

What I found was one of the more unusual and creative recordings I have ever heard. It's very difficult to explain what happens on a Karate record without just pressing play and letting the music do the talking. The closest categorization I can come up with for this band is indie-jazz, as unhelpful as that title may be. Karate writes what are essentially jazz-pop songs in an indie rock or even punk context, managing to do so in a completely unique way.

On a typical Karate song, the guitarist plays jazz chords and licks over meandering basslines and often formless drumming. The phrasing is very loose and there is a lot of sonic space for all three instruments to operate in. The band may take five minutes experimenting with the sound of a single riff, with no words and no end in sight. At times, it sounds like each of the members of Karate is playing something completely different. It often seems as if the band has no idea where the song is going once they get halfway through it, yet they just keep playing regardless.

But with all this jazziness, there is also an energy and a darkness more commonly found in the indie/punk scene. The lyrics and vocals are also highly reminiscent of artists in these genres. In the span of a single song, the band can traverse from a quiet, slow swing beat to a raging eruption of open, reverberating chords and back again, with enough time for a guitar solo or two. The end result is a very special musical journey that is intense in many different ways and is always full of surprises.

The band broke up in 2005 after their singer/guitarist Geoff Farina began developing hearing problems, and it's a shame. The band hit their stride on Bed, their third album, but the albums that followed proved that Karate had a lot they still intended to explore. "There Are Ghosts" is the first song on that record, and apparently Frank's former band Million Dead covered it at one point, although the Internet has evidently erased the song from existence. Give it a listen and check out the rest of the album if you're intrigued (heads up: you will be)!