Hurricane bells used to hang from the tops of seaside trees, heavy bells designed to ring out only when a storm approached. Fittingly, Tonight Is The Ghost, the debut album from the band Hurricane Bells, is a moody affair. A mix of somber undercurrents and chiming guitars, the album is at once plaintive and triumphant, bathed in echo and reverb. Yet there’s a looseness, hope, and soulfulness in its melancholic tempest; a late night thundershower with a new day on its heels.

Hurricane Bells is a new project from Steve Schiltz, singer and guitarist of Longwave for nearly ten years. After touring the better part of last year around Longwave’s fourth album Secrets Are Sinister – a critical success and arguably the best of the band’s career – Schiltz set up shop to create a new project with little else than his MacBook and an Mbox. He wrote, played, recorded, and mixed every note himself, arranging what would become Tonight Is The Ghost. Some songs were fully crafted within the past 18 months, while others are newly architected from pieces written throughout his years as a songwriter.