"If you wanna learn history, get outta your house" - Ghost Mice

Anna Wilkie will probably add another squirt of piss on my grave for liking Ghost Mice. Don't get me wrong, kiddos. Acoustic anarcho DIY folk-punk usually makes me roll my eyes and run screaming from the basement. And even though some of Ghost Mice's lyrics induce groans, and their harmonizing and rhythms sometimes gets grating, it's easy to look past that because they're such a burst of joyful expression. You can tell that these songs mean everything to them.

Chris (also founder and owner of Plan-It-X Records) and Hannah of The Devil is Electric formed Ghost Mice in 2002 after the former band broke up. Taking a guerrilla approach to music, they've eschewed electricity, foregoing amps and microphones (except when they play one of the million DIY festivals that seem to be popping up like mushrooms).

I'm not a huge fan of their debut album, The Debt of the Dead. It was more strident than listenable, and I wrote them off as a better concept than a band. However, over the course of splits with Saw Wheel and the incredible Defiance, Ohio, they started getting better and better. Instead of politics in a vacuum, they began focusing on family and relationships, channeling their politics through a humanizing lens. They put out a pretty good record on No Idea this year called Europe, chronicling a 90-day trip spent hitchhiking and camping across, well, Europe. It makes for an interesting listen and gets them closer to their folk roots.

Yeah, I hate uptight political punks as much as the next red-blooded American, but hey! Fiddles rule. Also, they have a cool motto ("Punk as Folk!"). I guess we're gonna have start spray-painting UP THA FOLX in alleys now, huh?

http://www.mysharefile.com/v/2560989/Ghost_Mice_The_Devil_and_My_Family.mp3.html

http://www.mysharefile.com/v/6204220/Ghost_Mice_Germany.mp3.html

http://www.mysharefile.com/v/1984571/Ghost_Mice_Big_Picture.mp3.html

http://www.mysharefile.com/v/5158098/Ghost_Mice_Cemetaries.mp3.html