The Ghost Club is a two-piece alt pop group local to Pittsburgh consisting of lead vocalist and pianist Domenic Dunegan as well as Kevin Corcoran on drums. The pair have been releasing music under the name 'The Ghost Club' for the better part of the last two years. There is an incredible tell-all interview with Hannah McDonald at The Erie Reader that delves into their process, and I highly suggest you check it out - the piece also talks about how the two musicians met on pure happenstance at a 1975 concert in Columbus, have recorded in LA, worked with Matt Squire (who produced Panic! At the Disco and All Time Low), and are now continuing to release music with Pittsburgh as their home base (Erie Reader).
This is my first introduction to the band, which is not only the beauty of Hometown for the Holidays, but surprising - their sound is incredibly tight, and they have one of the more impressive social media followings I've seen. For my numbers crowd, The Ghost Club has 16.7K Youtube subscribers, 4K Twitter followers, 38.7K on Instagram, and a cool monthly listenership of 92K on Spotify.
Ridiculous.
While I wish I would have familiarized myself with them sooner, this is the root of Hometown for the Holidays - to shed light on the talent that continues to grow in Pittsburgh, hoping that we will get some well-deserving artists the attention from us and our listeners they might otherwise have not yet received. As soon as I heard their Hometown song on the air I was so excited to have them in the fold. I'm not big on comparisons, but they're leaning into their predecessors from their early aughts that we often play like Panic!, Fall Out Boy, Twenty One Pilots and The Killers. I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn more Ghost Club with you as we have them in rotation this month.
As far as describing their sound is concerned, the band told McDonald that it's still early on for them, and they're working on figuring that out. Domenic credited his parents as musical influences. '"The thing about me is I didn't really grow up in a local music scene and all of this is still completely foreign to me, I didn't really have allegiance to one sound I guess ... I just kind of went off of what my parents listened to.'" Domenic continues to list Springsteen, Rick James, Bob Dylan, Twenty One Pilots, Half Alive, and My Chemical Romance.
The Ghost Club released two singles in the spring that received a lot of attention, "Isolated," and "Hate Me Too," followed by their summer single, "Same Graves," produced by Eric Palmquist which is now part of our Hometown rotation. There's a theme with their 2020 works - the music they released in the last year is all very much centered around feelings of isolation, anxiety and fear - something everyone has felt at least once over the last several months. They are focused on relating to their audience while writing what's honest to them as a group. Kevin told the Erie Reader, '" ... really at the end of the day, we're just trying to be ourselves and create something that is going to resonate with people. And we want people to like us, (who) a lot of the time feel uncomfortable in the world... (not to) feel alone in the world. We just want to make stuff that makes people feel like they're part of something ... that they're accepted.'"
Hear their synth-friendly single, "Same Graves," all month on the X - but I suggest you check out the animated music video, linked below, as soon as humanly possible.
Website: https://www.ghostclubmusic.com
Twitter: @TheGhostClubUS
Instagram: @theghostclubofficial
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGhostClubOfficial/