Corespondents

The second album from Corespondents is a plethora of repetitively tweaked guitar. I listened to Hairy Ghost Pipefish while driving up to Paradise, and I assure you this: it was no safe venture—the music caused a sort of sedative effect. While calm and at times beautiful, the instrumental Seattle band’s placid four-minute ballads never release any real energy. Must be all the rain they get up there. “Crowning” includes a distraught voice in the background uttering, “so sweet it’s painful,” but this ends up being more of a distraction than an accent. According to Corespondents’ label, Noise Order, the band has been featured on the soundtracks of a few films—We Go Way Back, Ugly Is a Movie and Eslabones—and that is just where it belongs. Be it a film, in a theater or the soundtrack of your life, Hairy Ghost Pipefish doesn’t delve much further than into the realm of background music.