NEWS: extra happy ghost!!! Announce The Release Of "Modern Horses"

Saved By Radio artist from Calgary follows up well received 2009 EP How The Beach Boys Sound To Those With No Feelings with full length debut produced by Chad VanGaalen.

In late summer 2010 Mathew Swann of extra happy ghost!!!, joined by a modest gathering of collaborators, entered Chad VanGaalen’s Yoko Eno to explore, arrange and record the nine songs that comprise the dense, thickset tones of Modern Horses. The project, conceived almost a year prior, had been spurred by a chance meeting at a 2009 Vic Chestnutt (RIP) show where Ian Russell of Flemish Eye Records conveyed VanGaalen’s fondness for EHG!!!’s debut EP.


Opening through the dark early moments of Mercy, Mercy, the uncontrived but anxiously tense pop songs of Modern Horses begin to reveal themselves – sparse; haunting; and mired in the humble themes of powerlessness, loss, and resigned isolation. These are dissonant songs joined together by a sound and sentiment. The album’s cohesive closing track and namesake, Modern Horses mediates on 9 horses that panicked and jumped off a Calgary bridge in 2005 while being corralled toward the city’s downtown. Amidst the dirge of tape hiss and feedback its chorus echoes, “Which ones have luck?”; questioning if choice can be anything but a small and helpless act; informed by the vast, immeasurable conditions beyond our control.

Modern Horses marks a shift for extra happy ghost!!!. This album was recorded entirely in a studio, relying heavily on the outside influence of VanGaalen’s production and engineering (previous releases consisted almost exclusively of Swann’s home recordings. Sonically and thematically cohesive, Modern Horses is nine songs, functioning as a whole and flowing seamlessly – an album that challenges and rewards the listener, revealing its depth with each repeated listen.