Animal Ghosts – Alexandra’s Band
From Portland, Oregon, USA
Released November 2, 2025
Genre: Dream Pop / Shoegaze / Alternative
When the ghosts start to sing
With Alexandra’s Band, Portland’s Animal Ghosts deliver a record that feels like a séance of sound — a meeting point between memory and melody, noise and nostalgia. Emerging from the Pacific Northwest’s thriving underground scene, the project blurs the line between the solitary intimacy of bedroom production and the grand emotional scope of classic shoegaze.
The album captures a sense of emotional dislocation familiar to dream pop but reshaped through a rawer, more visceral lens. It’s hazy and hypnotic, but there’s intent in its fog — the kind of sound that hides not to obscure, but to invite you deeper.
A sonic mirage
At its core, Alexandra’s Band thrives on texture. Layers of tremolo-drenched guitars shimmer like heat rising from asphalt; vocals drift in and out of focus, half-whispered, half-surrendered; percussion pulses steadily beneath, grounding the atmosphere in quiet gravity. It’s a delicate chaos — beautifully unrefined, intentionally blurred around the edges.
Each track seems to collapse time. Songs bleed into one another like fading photographs, evoking both the raw, reverb-heavy energy of My Bloody Valentine and the introspective calm of Beach Fossils or Cigarettes After Sex. But Animal Ghosts are not imitators — they use familiarity as a doorway, leading into something uniquely spectral and deeply personal.
Themes of surrender and stillness
Alexandra’s Band unfolds like a dream of release. The record traces a quiet descent into acceptance — not the collapse of despair, but the beauty of letting go. On “Sundiiver”, for example, the narrative centers on overstimulation and emotional exhaustion: the decision to stop fighting, to sink, to dissolve into sound. It’s as if the album invites listeners to do the same — to give in to its drift, to stop seeking control and simply exist within it.
Thematically, the record balances fragility and resilience. Each song holds a mirror to solitude, to the ache of presence fading, to the strange peace that comes with surrender. Even the moments of distortion and feedback feel like emotional echoes, reverberating through invisible spaces.
A modern shoegaze statement
What makes Alexandra’s Band so striking is its commitment to honesty. The production, led by Jack Yagerline, stays close to its origins — intimate, imperfect, human. Recorded with minimal interference, the songs retain the immediacy of their creation. The reverb doesn’t hide flaws; it amplifies emotion.
There’s also something distinctly Portland about the record — that mix of rain-soaked melancholy and fierce independence. Animal Ghosts sound both alone and connected, rooted in a DIY tradition but reaching toward something cinematic. The album’s sequencing, alternating between tension and calm, reinforces its dreamlike ebb and flow.
Final reflection
Alexandra’s Band is more than a collection of songs — it’s an atmosphere, a haunted space suspended between pulse and silence. It doesn’t shout for attention; it murmurs, hums, lingers. You don’t just listen to it — you drift into it, like falling through mist and light until the world blurs into tone.
A fragile, immersive masterpiece, “Alexandra’s Band” cements Animal Ghosts as one of Portland’s most evocative voices — a dream that refuses to fade.
© Thusblog
