Amanda Ghost: Ghost Stories : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Although it's helped the careers and creativity of Bjork, Macy Gray, Tori Amos and Madonna, England hasn't produced a major solo female rocker since Polly Jean Harvey. The U.K.'s best bid for renewed femme respect is a category-defying firebrand whose Ghost Stories evokes all those icons, yet asserts its own dark splendor. A Londoner of Indian and Spanish heritage, blessed with a husky vibrato from the house of Stevie Nicks, Amanda Ghost revels in classic singer-songwriter introspection, drama, melody and tough lyricism. On her debut album, former EMF guitarist Ian Dench and house remixer Lukas Burton twiddle today's techno toys. The result is a rock-dance-folk studio marvel with songs as intrepid as the sonics. Swinging from the club-rock stomp of "Filthy Mind" to the orchestral grandeur of "Numb," this beautiful outcast makes each track matter with a sweeping emotional range that suits the arrangements' ornate bombast. "Cellophane" wraps her sprawling angst into one concise, Stones-y argument: Ghost's talent is spooky. (RS 849)

BARRY WALTERS