Ghost Stories (studio album) by Blue Öyster Cult

From spigelwii 04/12/2024 12:20

What we have here is *functionally* a 45-year-old record that is finally seeing the light thanks to "modern AI and magical musical talents," which reads as a PR-friendly version of "I dunno, we felt like putting these out to make a little more money as the band winds down its touring career."

What follows is a hardcore fan's take on what's really going on here and why this album is both essential to fans and practically inessential to pretty much anyone else:

Fortunately, even if the album doesn't sound great in 2024 (I mean, it was recorded and partially mixed in 1979 and not finished until 2024, so...), all of the songs here are still strong enough at their core to have been mixed in with any of those late-70s and early 80s BOC albums. If contextualized within what they were doing at the time, everything sort of starts to work really well. The proper way to listen to this album might actually be to collect them all together and literally shuffle them into a playlist of songs from Mirrors, Cultosaurus Erectus, Fire of Unknown Origin, and The Revolution By Night. You wouldn't be able to tell that they don't belong. In that way, this record is really more for the heads than anyone else, and I guess there's not anything really wrong with that for a band that's been around for over half a century and wants to go back and revisit the past one more time.

So it's not a "proper" record. It's still an admirable effort to put all the work in to give hardcore fans (read: me) one more little treat before riding off into the sunset. Thank you for everything, Blue Öyster Cult.