In keeping with horror movie tropes, ghosts in photos are just blurry people…

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Katherine St Asaph: Carina Round’s an incisive songwriter and an absolute dervish of a vocalist, but for a decade now she’s escaped acclaim. It’s a number of things: getting mired in merited-but-dismissive PJ Harvey comparisons (early albums) then Glen Ballard slickness (Slow Motion Addict, minus the tremendous “Stolen Car“), arriving a few years behind trend, lacking the co-signs that’d let her dodge that. (Her critical-assessment slot this year went to Screaming Females, apparently.) It’s a shame, because Tigermending is her best work in years: by turns spooky, steely, weird as hell and tremendous as its opposite. That last is “Girl and the Ghost”: post-apocalyptic intro, vocals like thunder strikes through silence, backing vox like Greek fire, words hellbent on finally getting up from rock bottom and a chorus that provides that push. It’s anthemic without the associated clichés, quirky without being feeble, and goddamn if I didn’t, don’t need half these things shouted at me this year. And if it’s too short and acoustic, there’s always the Puscifer remix.
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Alfred Soto: Putting the voice aside for a moment, a formalist triumph: intro postpunk skronk segues into an effect-laden midtempo rest stop evoking late seventies studio perfection. But when The Voice wrings every permutation of hurt and lust from “What you think you knows,” stacks of overdubbed guitars begin their fodderstompf – not on cue, but keyed to her performance. Kristin Hersh would be proud. 
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Iain Mew: I really love the repeated line “you will see the difference between what you think you know and what you know”. It’s a reveal, a “now see the real truth!” delivered with some defiance and triumph, but at the same time it makes clear that things are much too complex to just be either wrong or right and that something more interesting is going on. The guitar bursts come just as precise and knotted, and if I don’t quite get swept away by the build I’m left wanting to work my way through the layers so that I can be.
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Patrick St. Michel: I expected a build-up, but I didn’t anticipate the catharsis “Girl & The Ghost” had waiting in the shadows. Carina Round’s voice dominates in the best way here.
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Edward Okulicz: You won’t hear a more dynamically-interesting indie rock/pop thing this year, and Round’s voice is more than up to the task of running with her instrumentation — you can imagine she could sing just about any subgenre of alt-rock you can conceive. In this case, it’s one with incisive, economical lyrics.
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Anthony Easton: The “screaming/singing behind a faux orchestral background” thing might be this decade’s new formal cliché. This does not improve anything. Extra point for hand claps.
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Will Adams: Just gorgeous, both in its orchestration and lyrical progression. They work in tandem, building to a sprawling rock track that cuts deeper with each second. Carina Round is hushed at first – hear the fragile vibrato on “cracks” – but crescendos to a devastating blow: “What you think you’ve given/Is not what the world has received/Can you feel the distance between/What you think you know, what you know?” It’s been a while since a lyric gave me such pause.
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Ian Mathers: I wasn’t fully sold until drums kicked in again during the “what you know and what you think you know” part, but those are awfully good drums. The opening verses are a bit too flatly declaratory for my taste, but they’re more than offset by the way they lead into the refrain and then that powerful, brass-assisted climax. more of that guitar too, please.
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Zach Lyon: Cutting like a blade of cold wind, though I can’t tell if she’s doing it to herself or someone else (who probably doesn’t notice). It’s either a calculated breakdown, the kind where you’re too old to not criticize yourself for sticking your head under the pillow and trying to make a good scream, or it’s a calculated murder, the kind that doesn’t even make you feel any better. I project on it the former but prefer the latter; let’s assume it’s both. “What you think you’ve given is not what the world has received” is the type of lyric I just want to put there and look at.
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Jonathan Bogart: The last time I tried to listen to Carina Round, the dry, monochrome production gave me a headache and her unwelcoming voice scared me. So I’m glad to hear her in Technicolor and intensely communicative; the whirlwind she summons is far more human than I was dreading.
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Brad Shoup: Record reviewers talk about “undeveloped ideas,” and I have to be honest, I rarely know what the fuck they mean. Are these sonic ideas? Thematic? What would full development look like? Is there a Fields Medal for musicians? I say this cos “Girl and the Ghost” just sounds like it would attract all kinds of nonsense about “ideas”. Maybe cos it’s three minutes of song on a 4:30 frame. Or perhaps due to Round’s stirring Q&A — an underused lyrical approach — in the bridge, or the headache brass blare seemingly included to cow you into a corner. Or any of a half-dozen other sonic touches that radiate laceration. Round’s Timony-esque guitar sounds like horns, the horns sound like bees, the questions sound like taunts.
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