Ghost Work (Seaweed, Minus the Bear, etc) prep LP2 (stream “Godspeed on the Trail”)

Ghost Work–aka Seaweed vocalist Aaron Stauffer, Snapcase bassist Dustin Perry, former Milemarker guitarist Sean Husick, and former Minus the Bear drummer Erin Tate–will follow their 2020 debut LP You’ll Be Buried With with their sophomore album, Light a Candle for the Lonely, on March 8 via Spartan Records (pre-order).

“I had been looking for more mid-tempo rock bands rooted in punk/hardcore and struggled to find ones that I could identify with other than some later Hot Water stuff, Interpol and The Strokes where I often landed,” says Sean Husick, the band’s primary songwriter. “I set out to craft something in between these bands.”

“These songs are about the conflict between all that is natural and what we do with our minds and our creations that move us away from, or ultimately poison, the natural,” says Aaron Stauffer, “[specifically] the forces that drive our worst selves — addictions and want.”

“For a lot of these songs, I actually work on my vocal parts while in the act of paddling around the very cold California coastline. My plan was to listen to a song over-and-over in route to surf, so it would be planted in my subconscious,” continues Aaron, who currently works as an emergency room RN. “It was the same with an ER shift — I would find myself passively [contemplating] a song as I worked, especially if it was a heavy situation.”

Since the band members all live in different places, much of the album came together by sending files back and forth, but the final drum tracking was done in person in Sean’s Chicago studio. “We all had more input on this record,” says Erin Tate. “While I was in Chicago recording, Sean and I had a fair amount of time to tweak and re-tweak ideas.”

We’re premiering lead single “Godspeed on the Trail,” which is very much in that mid-tempo rock realm that Sean was talking about, and you can hear a little Interpol in those driving guitars, along with echoes of the ’90s post-hardcore world that Milemarker and Seaweed came from in the first place. “This is literally my best singing performance and recording I’ve completed EVER since I began home recording,” boasts Aaron. “I would put this song up at the same level of some of my Seaweed favorites. It reminds me of The Cure doing an AC/DC cover.”

Check out the new song, album art, and tracklist below.

For more from Aaron Stauffer, he stays very prolific with releasing solo music on his Bandcamp.

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Tracklist
1. Godspeed on the Trail
2. Earthquake
3. Erase the Morning
4. Grapes and Chrome
5. Orange of the Flame
6. Line 2
7. The Tea Leaves
8. Under the Fire
9. Conjured Leverage
10. Twilight of Hope
11. Wayward Northern