Having previously cast themselves as 19th-century American vagrants, Anglo-American duo Ben Parker and David Berkeley, aka Sons of Town Hall (named for a 1990s “junk raft” built by octogenarian nomad Poppa Neutrino to cross the Atlantic), present a new concept and fictional world on Of Ghosts And Gods. Here, Victorian-era explorers Josiah Chester Jones (Berkeley) and George Ulysses Brown (Parker) travel the world on a self-built, mythical raft. They are joined, musically at least, by Jordan Katz, variously on trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone and tuba, David Felberg, Elizabeth Young, Kimberly Fredenburgh and Dana Winogradhorns on strings, percussionist Mathias Kunzli, woodwinds by Elizabeth VanArsdel, Kevin Vigneau and Jesse Tatum, with Will Robertson on upright bass and accordion.
Framed in reverse order to the title, it opens with the repeated piano phrase of Gods coloured by flute (Sam Skelton), oboe (Carolyn Johnston), bassoon (Eva Lewis) and strings with its brief choral sung lyrical invitation to “Leave your fears far behind/Come across the great wide/Come on open up your eyes/And you will find us”.
Picked out on acoustic guitar and hushedly sung in overlapping voices with the repeated refrain “this is how we build it”, the gradually swelling How To Build A Boat offers the instructions and list of required tools and parts in order to cross the ocean and “cut the lines that bind us”.
Having embarked on the waters, they encounter Wild Winds, a steady strummed, strings and horns tinted number on which each character recounts his personal history (Josiah born in the war and a stowaway, George “the son of a butcher man”), the two meeting up down the pub and the pair drawn to their venture by “a song through the salt and stars”.
With its sweeping strings, steady driving drums and pulsing guitar notes, switching vocal order The Lion’s Paw finds that, forsaken by god, hardships weigh heavy in the cold months, George calling out “hear me Saint Jerome, help me understand… help me be a better man” and Josiah of leaving London town when “desperate times call for desperate means”, breaking into metaphors about the beats inside as they implore “if you don’t take away the thorn from the lion’s paw/See what you’ll find there, at the break of dawn”.
Anchored by a circling minimal piano notes, opening with George singing the first verse, the jerkily waltzing Whalebone with Okcate Evita Smith McCommas on bass clarinet speaks to the perils of whaling, as much about the whales as those hunting them (“The oil is never worth the fight/Beneath the sea too many lie/Don’t go in that ship tonight”) as it urgently gathers in tempo and power before ebbing away. Another rippling melody has George on lead, navigating the parting song Rocky Shores Of England, although this is more about not foundering on the reefs of romance (“They say that water smooths even the ragged people down/It didn’t take a team of mules to break your heart/It took one man with honour in his veins/To know how much he needed you again”).
The circlingly fingerpicked softly harmonised Antarctica reaches the polar regions, resolution in their souls (“We’re not afraid of anything/Come flowing ice/Come howling wind/No man no beast can turn us round/No ghost, no god can stop us now”) while with its falsetto-pitched dreamy strings refrain Sirens draws on Greek mythology as the voices (Renee Coughlin, Hillary Watson and Noelle Frances Coughlin) offer the ‘sweet travelers’ comfort and solace but, the doom here is of the loneliness of being exhausted and alone (“When we’re apart, it breaks my heart”).
Etched on what sounds like Spanish guitar, the resigned New Orleans with its music hall-like carousel sway melody and brass sails further into seas of heartbreak as the singer’s circus trapeze artist’s lover is seduced away by another, marked by the inspired line “Oh, how you bury your dead/High above not six feet in the ground”.
Picking up the ‘being apart’ thread, Mutiny with its hollow acoustic guitar and mournful brass is a simple but emotionally potent number, as the singer, who has a child on the way, asks the crazed captain to turn the boat around, though a deep reading might find it a call to those steering the political boats to change course because “It’s hard to see where the hope has gone”.
Featuring Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins on yearning fiddle, the sentiment and narrative of the campfire dreamily regretful In My Arms Once More is pretty much summed up by the title (“Broken promise, broken bottles/Piled up the floor/Oh, to hold you in my arms once more”) as our lonesome cowboy finds his words “I don’t need your wages man/I don’t need your worried mind/All I need’s the open road/And my banjo, I’ll be fine” coming back to haunt him.
It closes, then, with the framing hesitant piano, flute and cello instrumental Ghosts, a serene end to an intricately, beautifully and never ostentatiously arranged album, the voices full of quiet emotion as the music and the words draw you in, like the title, it’s haunting and divine.
Of Ghosts and Gods (March 4th, 2026) Self Released
Note: They’ve also launched the Madmen Cross the Water podcast, hosted by fictional superfan and self-appointed band archivist, Elias B. Worthington (played by British actor Oliver Maltman), with each episode telling the adventures behind the songs featuring sound effects, a lush original score, and a script that, it says here, is at once hilarious and heartfelt.
Sons of Town Hall is currently on a release tour in the U.S.A. and will return to England for a run of
dates in June.
Upcoming Tour Dates:
US
3 Mar – Club Passim – Cambridge, MA
4 Mar – The Music Hall Lounge – Portsmouth, NH
7 Mar – Purple Fiddle – Thomas, WV
8 Mar – Mountain Stage – Charleston, WV
UK
11 Jun – Caroline Street Social Club – Shipley
14 June – Kirkby Stephen Sports & Social Club – Kirkby Stephen
16 Jun – Arts Hub – Ripon
17 Jun – Greystones – Sheffield
18 Jun – Islington Assembly Hall, London w/ Police Dog Hogan
20 Jun – The Tolmen Centre, Constantine