Resurrectionists’ Album Foretold the Future

Like some sort of banjo-wielding prophet, Joseph Cannon accidentally predicted that the world would shut down.

It was 2019, and Cannon was working on lyrics for his band Resurrectionists‘ sophomore album Now That We Are All Ghosts. Late into the track “The New Winter,” Cannon sings, “put the city on lockdown/put it on quarantine.” Unbeknownst to Cannon, a pandemic was soon to break out and the city of Milwaukee would actually go on lockdown months later. Four years would pass before the album saw the light of day.

“If you listen to it and read the lyrics, it really sounds like (the album) is screaming out of the pandemic,” says Cannon. “But the lyrics – for the most part, we were already working on this stuff before the pandemic started.”

Cannon notes that the lyrics were actually inspired by his reading of the Thomas Mann novels The Magic Mountain and Death in Venice — the latter involving a cholera outbreak. The dreadful subject matter of these two novels are all-too fitting considering that the band describes its sound as Doom Chamber-Americana – a home-grown label for the band’s grim take on country-rock-and-roll.

Resurrectionists started in 2018 with a much quieter stage presence – the most noticeable difference from the band’s current dynamically-driven gloom-and-doom being the presence of Gavin Hardy and his pedal steel. But Hardy left the band in 2019, leaving Cannon and the rest of the band – which includes Josh Barto on drums and Jeff Brueggeman on bass – with two options: Find another pedal steel player in Wisconsin, or try something new. Cannon opted for the latter, and brought on multi-instrumentalist Gian Pogliano.

“I’ve known Gian for years and he’s like an encyclopedic musical intellect,” Cannon says. “His idea was to bring weirdly-affected 12-string guitar and keys. So, we shift between these wild, atmospheric shrieks on the 12-string and Mellotron sounds.”

Now That We Are All Ghosts is out now, and marks the first time that fans can hear this new lineup on record – aside from an EP of re-recorded songs from the band’s pedal steel days released in early 2023 called What Goes Out. The sophomore full-length is not only a sonic departure from the band’s 2019 debut What Comes In, but it takes a unique approach to its storytelling that transcends the audio recordings. Cannon commissioned filmmakers to craft music videos for each song, ultimately showcasing all nine videos at an event that the band dubbed the Inaugural Resurrectionists Film Fest.

On paper, this is a smart way to promote an album in an age where “content is king” and our attention spans are always ready for the next release. But the concept truly fleshes out the atmospheric, explosive soundtrack-to-the-apocalypse that Resurrectionists have created with Now That We Are All Ghosts – almost as if they wrote a movie backwards, starting with the music first. For example, the grandfather clock that is shown on the album art – its minute hand resting at a foreboding two-minutes-until midnight – makes several appearances throughout the videos. The films range from depicting Western shootouts to a trippy performance in a hotel pool. The overall product might not make much sense, but it doesn’t need to – why not make the weird rock-and-roll even weirder?

Speaking of weird rock, Now That We Are All Ghosts opens with “A Classic Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue,” a somber ditty that wastes no time demonstrating the dynamic between Cannon’s banjo picking and Pogliano’s leads. It’s a deceiving track that leads you to believe that Resurrectionists might still be hanging onto some of the Gothic-country elements present in the band’s debut. But just before the minute-and-a-half mark, the band explodes into a raucous chorus. Pogliano’s sustained chords on the Mellotron lift up Cannon’s wailing vocals as shrill feedback from Cannon’s banjo signals the arrival of a new era for Resurrectionists.

On “The Ghost This Time,” the band presents a melancholic, love-sick ballad. There’s a sense of anticipation throughout the roughly five-and-half minute song – the band has demonstrated that it can get loud, and you can feel something bubbling under the surface. The band inches closer and closer to what you expect will be a cacophonous finale – but they never overdo it, always letting Cannon’s heartbroken vocals breathe. Rather than a noisy finale, the band instead maintains the atmospheric vibe, ultimately leaving the listener to hang on every word of Cannon’s haunting vocals.

We see a more upbeat side of Resurrectionists’ unique brand of gloomy-country rock on “The New Winter.” Here, Cannon’s guitar playing and Pogliano’s keys bounce off of one another while Barto and Brueggeman drive the dynamics of the tune – when Barto pulls back, Brueggeman steps up with some of the catchiest bass runs on the album. The band flips the script on the following track “Blue Henry,” where they launch into a haunting finale as Cannon repeatedly sings, “Now that we are all ghosts/We will be younger soon” – featuring one of the most chilling Mellotron moments on the album.

The album closes with “(hotel with pool),” the longest track on the album. It’s a defining moment for the listener – a song that truly encapsulates all of the various elements that make up the DNA of this band. It’s almost as if “(hotel with pool)” is the final exam that you’ve been studying for across the previous eight tracks. The latter two-and-half minutes of the song are the most cacophonous moments on the album, utilizing feedback, frenetic solos and Cannon’s maniacal wailing. It’s as if the grandfather clock on the album cover has finally struck midnight.

Time is a recurring theme throughout Now That We Are All Ghosts. On “The New Winter,” Cannon sings “Thirty years gone/And I haven’t gotten to the bottom of this.” There’s always a longing for the past in the band’s storytelling, along with an underlying fear of the future. And while this isn’t technically an album about the COVID-19 pandemic, it certainly parallels how many felt during that time. There are lots of calm, meditative moments in these songs, but they’re often built up to these interruptions of energy and noise – like the anxious thoughts of a person trapped indoors and left to the musings of their own mind.

Time has also played a large role in the creation of this album – fans of the band have waited a long time to hear these songs on record. But as Cannon sings on “(hotel with pool), “We wait and we are rewarded.”