Ghosts Of Tables And Chairs

Citizens Here and Abroad aren’t the first alternative pop/rock band that has had a female lead singer who favors a deadpan vocal style, and it’s safe to assume they won’t be the last. The deadpan approach has worked well for everyone from Suzanne Vega to pre-Lovelife, pre-”Ladykillers” Lush; thankfully, it works fairly well for Citizens Here and Abroad’s Adrienne Robillard on Ghosts of Tables and Chairs. No one will mistake Robillard for a belter; she’s far from that. Like Vega, Robillard thrives on subtlety, restraint, and understatement — those are her trademarks, and they’re perfect for the moody, spacy, droning ambience that Citizens Here and Abroad favor on this 2004 release. Ghosts of Tables and Chairs isn’t meant to be aggressively hard-rocking — the whole thing is like an endless pop/rock drone, and Robillard’s deadpan girlishness fits right in. One of the things that gives this CD its droning quality is the fact that the group doesn’t always adhere to a traditional verse/chorus/verse/chorus song structure. On many of the songs, guitar playing — not real choruses — separates the verses that Robillard sings, and even though Citizens Here and Abroad are melodic, they’re aren’t melodic in a hooky way. The no-chorus/no-hooks policy that often prevails on Ghosts of Tables and Chairs doesn’t exactly make it an album that goes out of its way to be accessible — certainly not if verse/chorus/verse/chorus hookiness is your idea of accessibility. But for those who aren’t afraid of some abstraction and angularity, this CD isn’t bad — mildly uneven, but not bad. The writing could have been a bit more consistent, but all things considered, Ghosts of Tables and Chairs leaves listeners with a favorable impression of the Bay Area foursome. – Alex Henderson