Album Of The Week: School Of Seven Bells Ghostory

Back when School Of Seven Bells first started, they seemed like some perfect lab-created hybrid combination of early-'00s dream-rock warriors. Benjamin Curtis, one third of the trio, was also one third of Secret Machines, those skyward-reaching travelers of mystic consciousness who played like a stadium band even when they were opening up for, like, Blonde Redhead in a half-empty club. And the other two thirds were twin sisters Claudia and Alejandra Dehaza, the previous leaders of the electro-shoegaze group On!Air!Library!, who released one excellent and sadly slept-on self-titled album in 2004 before spinning out into component parts before the world got a chance to catch onto how awesome they were. Over their first two albums together, School Of Seven Bells went onto sort of actualize that potential, making two very satisfying albums of spacey-synthy alt-rock that never quite got past good and into great. Then, late in 2010, Claudia Dehaza left the band, and that looked like that. Bands don't often lose half of an identical-twin pair and then go onto do anything great. And yet here's Ghostory, the first album recorded without Claudia and the best thing School Of Seven Bells have ever release. I have no idea how that works, but I'll take it.