A lean psych-pop triumph, “India” blends in every element of Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger’s found-object feel — sounding by turns like French folk, pre-fame Pink Floyd and bohemian gypsy music. You enter into this world one way, and come out another, almost as if emerging from a dream state.
Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger, led by Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, have somehow held this hyptnotic gaze for years. They plugged in a while back but, other than that, their finely tuned sense of musical reverie remains the same. It’s a fanciful trance, a throwback musing, like finding something that should have been lost in the Watergate era.
Listen as “India” begins with this dim intrigue, setting a ruminative scene as Lennon and Muhl harmonize over a wandering guitar figure. Charlotte Kemp Muhl’s vocal then leads the track into new eastern-flavored intrigues, as “India” starts to fill in around the lyric. It remains this lean, spacious journey, even through a series of free-spiritedly episodic twists. Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger stops and starts, takes quick breaths and then charges forward in a burst of wordless vocals, explorative keys and thundering rhythm.
Then, “India” is gone, like a multi-colored apparition. The song advances GOASTT Stories, Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl’s follow-up to 2014’s well-received Midnight Sun. Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger earlier released Acoustic Sessions and the Mark Ronson-produced “Jardin Du Luxembourg” single.
GOASTT’s subsequent La Carotte Bleue reworked their earlier music with a more muscular musical approach. The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger’s road band includes Tim Kuhl, Jared Samuel and Robbie Mangano.
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