Cool Ghouls

Cool Ghouls, a garage rock quartet based in San Francisco, fuse the unrefined, elemental force heard in groups such as the Troggs with vocal arrangements that echo the polished craft of the Association. Their initial releases, beginning with the self-titled 2013 LP, surge forward on the restless drive of young players steeped in reverb and distortion as they charge through recreations drawn from Nuggets and Pebbles compilations. Within the ringing reverberation and raw excitement lay compositions hinting at greater depth, prompting the group to broaden their approach by incorporating country rock textures on Animal Races in 2016 before foregrounding the vocals in the refined folk-rock-inflected garage sound of At George's Zoo, released in 2021.

The outfit originated among onetime high-school companions from a Bay Area suburb and features guitarists Pat McDonald and Ryan Wong, bassist Pat Thomas, and drummer Alex Fleshman, with Wong and Thomas handling shared lead vocals. Their debut outing arrived as the six-track Alright Cassette in late 2012. Momentum built rapidly inside San Francisco and farther afield once local figure Tim Cohen of the Fresh & Onlys began endorsing the band and helmed production for the self-titled full-length issued in 2013. Maintaining their pace, they followed a year later with A Swirling Fire Burning Through the Rye in 2014. Kelley Stoltz was enlisted as producer for the third album; he also contributed guitar during the sessions, joined by pedal steel player Tom Heyman. Animal Races appeared on Empty Cellar in August 2016.

Subsequent years saw the limited release of a tour cassette captured in their rehearsal space under the title Gord's Horse, followed by the live recording Live '19 from 2019, both surfacing while the band continued performing. Once Live '19 emerged, however, live activity ceased and individual members pursued paths that complicated ongoing group commitments. Even so, the quartet completed an intensive five-month stretch of writing, rehearsal, and tracking that yielded 27 songs throughout 2020. Inside a compact garage studio they enlarged their psychedelic garage rock palette to embrace folk ballads, Baroque pop, and sunshine pop, supported by strings from Dylan Edrich, keyboards from Henry Baker, and a horn section comprising saxophonist Danny Brown alongside trumpeter Andrew Stephens. From that abundance they selected fifteen tracks for At George's Zoo, issued jointly by Empty Cellar and Melodic Records in March 2021.