Butterfly House is a band from Brighton, led by Martyn Lewis, who make a dark brand of sadcore preoccupied with death, loss and depression. His latest album, By Ghostlight, is strangely both relatable and obscure, a familiar angst filtered through an eerie lens made of ground up bones and spider webs. Indeed, the term ghostlight has pretty creepy connotations. As Lewis describes:
“In victorian theatres, a ghostlight was a lamp left on over night to ensure that the gas they used at the time didn’t build up in the system. Legend began to wrap around this custom, and eventually the ghostlight was said to be used as a beacon for ghosts to put on their own performances when the theatre was closed, and by appeasing them, they wouldn’t cause havok.”
By mixing the bedroom pop aesthetic with lyrics that sound like something Malcolm Middleton might deliver if he lived in a haunted mansion, Butterfly House straddle the hopeful youth/miserable acceptance divide. ‘Birds Strung Together’ is a love song that deals with hesitation and fear (“When you spread your wings, I’m paralysed”), ‘God is Laughing at Me’ covers Lewis’ insecurities about his singing voice and questions the justification of songwriting (”God is laughing at me because self-importance is blasphemy”), while closer ‘Phantoms Forever’ faces up to worries of death and the loss of self (“If I die keep me alive in your dreams and memory”)
It would be easy to say Lewis has created an album for goths too bashful to wear black lipstick. But not only does By Ghostlight have all of the peculiarity of such subcultures without the self-awareness, playing as the odd machinations of a mind rather than a conceited performance, there is more to the album than a vaguely supernatural darkness. Because despite how the song titles may sound, Lewis offers hope on these songs. Rather than pretend everything is bright and breezy, By Ghostlight finds hope through accepting reality, acknowledging our minuscule position in the grand scheme of things and remembering that everyone else is in the same boat. In this way, the album is a light in the gloom, a reminder that we are all alone together.
You can grab By Ghostlight now on a pay-what-you-can basis via Bandcamp. The artwork is by Jasmine Scott.