While music critics have been busy coining the term Chill Wave to describe the burgeoning crop of electronic acts whipping up dreamy soundscapes in their bedrooms, Paul Duncan and bandmate Oliver Chopy are already pushing past those definitions with a sound that comfortably cozies up with the name they’ve taken for the project. Warm Ghost’s debut album builds on the sound they developed with a pair of well received EPs, exploring comfortable intimacies and all the dark things lurking around the edges. Duncan’s wrought vocals mix 70s emotion with 80s cadences and the pair wrap everything in thick synth applications and dirty-edged drum samples. As if to drive home the unpolished nature of the staticky kicks and shivering snares, bits of found sound and random noise fall here and there, shattering any sense of consistency they might have shaped with their sonic atmospheres. Duncan’s vocals have a more direct way of accomplishing this as well. His tone and instinctually captivating delivery present a strength that is countered by the vulnerability in many lyrics. Songs like “I Will Return” and “Myths on Rotting Ships” flirt with modern synth pop, but Duncan and Chopy have a way of letting the samples pile up and the loops deteriorate enough to find conclusions that have not been previously explored. Songs like “Splay of Road” and “An Absolute Light” push things even further from preconceived formulas or expected structures, but the album never completely abandons approachable touchpoints and familiar notions. Nothing stays as it seems for long, but the dense ethereality they’ve created with Narrows definitely leaves a lasting presence on even passing listeners.

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