GHOSTKEEPER SHARES “LIPSTICK” VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS CANADIAN FESTIVAL DATES BEGIN JUNE 21
We’ve received the first new music of 2024 from Ghostkeeper, the core duo of namesake singer, songwriter, and guitarist Shane Ghostkeeper, and singer, songwriter, and percussionist/electronics manipulator Sarah Houle. Over the years, the band has encapsulated numerous other configurations and stages of development, and the most recent one is responsible for their critically acclaimed 2023 Polaris Music Prize long-listed album Multidimensional Culture.
“Lipstick” opens with a strangely inviting, other-worldly noise, a chirping, digitized cicada perhaps, before settling into a sultry drumbeat. The beat – as well as various other aspects of the production – betray an interest in sounds and rhythms from trap music, and the futuristic-sounding sonic architecture of contemporary R&B acts like FKA Twigs and Rosalía, but the song is grounded by the two singers, who each take a verse, their voices filtered through a pleasingly psychedelic lens.
Shane explains further.
“This song was conceived out of a sweet moment of romantic nostalgia: shared cigarettes outside of Broken City after a show, shooting our own Super 8 music videos, and a photo booth picture that remains in the breast pocket of my jean jacket that Sarah sent to me while away at art school in Halifax after our very first summer of love. Lipstick is dedicated to all you lovers out there.”
The song represents a return to the core duo and stands as an acknowledgment, celebration, and strengthening of this initial bond that initially ignited everything. “Lipstick” is ‘a reminiscing song’, Shane says. ‘After we met that summer in Edmonton, Sarah went off to art college in Halifax, and she sent me care packages of letters and mixtapes. One had a photobooth strip tucked in it, and that was the first photo I held onto forever.’ The song references the couple’s early days in Calgary, going to shows at local bars, and the age-old ritual of between-set sidewalk hangs and shared cigs outside the venue. It was on one of these nights out that Shane ‘noticed the lipstick stains on the end of our cigarette, and it was just something I’d never noticed in that way until now.’
TOUR DATES:
June 21-23 2024 – North Country Fair
Jul 11 – Jul 14, 2024 – Winnipeg Folk Fest
August 3-5 2024 – Canmore Folk Fest