Album Notes

"Taking its name from Bloom's flexible, elegant backing band, 'Ghosts of Radio' picks up where his excellent 'Moses' left off, further exploring wistful, deliciously melancholic memory with a cinematic eye for detail and a poet's touch.

Bracingly punctuated with deft guitar figures by Eric Straumanis (whose playing delights throughout), the opening 'Minnesota' is a loping, easy-rolling folk-rock gem, while 'Union Suit' approximates Simon massaging a Neil Young country-rocker.

The war-torn, elegiac 'Prophetstown' yields to a bemused, bittersweet 'Rosalie,' whose hints of The Band's music hall sensibilities escalate into full 'Basement Tapes'-era junk-trap glory on the hilarious 'Red Dodge Dart.'

'Idle Signs of Summer,' with its colorful, daft'n'randy small-town vignettes and infectious chorus, is a minor masterpiece, the feisty, slightly nutty 'Oh My Soul' conjures a Terry Adams (NRBQ) fever dream, and the closing 'Baltimore' celebrates a peculiar spin on Death's release.

Front to back, it's a richly appointed, masterful record."

-Jim Musser, Iowa City Press -Citizen


"Patrick Bloom covers a lot emotional ground, without ever raising his voice. From the nursery rhyme comedy of 'Oh My Soul' to the Sherwood Anderson-esque small town portrait of 'Idle Signs Of Summer,' there's something sublimely ordinary and familiar about these songs. But they're well-made and affecting, always with at least one simple detail that makes them way more than the sum of their parts. It's a mystery well worth exploring."

-Kent Williams, Little Village Magazine