The right record at the right time, a lantern shining brightly through the fog of sorrow. Canadian indie folk/art pop outfit The Burning Hell take us to Ghost Palace—a new full-length album with eleven light-hearted stories in which death and disaster play a role, without feeling dark or gloomy. Making the apocalypse fun, as they say themselves, but that can be interpreted broadly: “Shirtless Jim Morrison and his Floridian bedroom eyes gaze // From a postcard pinned to the gate round his grave at the Père-Lachaise // Immortal hormones above, or bones below // Which one’s the real Lizard King? Baby, I don’t know” (from opening track Celebrities in Cemeteries).

We’re talking about songwriter Mathias Kom and multi-instrumentalists Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll, who have built up quite a discography since 2007. With all that experience, they know what to do to create an explosion of color and wonder, and that’s what they do. Lyrics are imaginative and buoyant, supported by genre-crossing, bountiful music in which even a Laughing Kookaburra (in Birds of Australia) and the Apollo 10 crew (in Brazil Nuts and Blue Curaçao) fly by. Unconventional and optimistic, exactly what we need at the moment.

Ghost Palace is out now digitally, on CD and vinyl LP, through You’ve Changed Records (North America) and BB*Island (elsewhere). Also feturing Carlie Howell (double bass), Steven Lambke (electric guitar), Amy Nicoll (oboe, vocals) and José Contreras (organ, vocals) on select tracks.

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