Courtesy of Profound Discomfort

January 28, 2025

Love, Time and the Fear of Death: Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s ‘Ghost Electricity/Vampire Draw (Deluxe Edition)’

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In October of 2022, Richard Edwards of the early 2000’s indie band Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s released an album about love, time, hope and most importantly, ketamine. Ghost Electricity/Vampire Draw wasn’t an experimental album more than it was an emotional one. Its songs contained Margot’s uniquely atmospheric indie rock sound, and the lyrical content was mostly familiar: nostalgia, love, redemption and in typical Margot fashion, drugs. It was a full-length album, consisting of 10 songs, but not quite a hefty one. It was layered instrumentally and lyrically, featuring reverberating piano and guitar lines. It was a solid addition to a solid discography and a satisfying reminder of Margot’s legacy. 

However, something was missing. Richard Edwards has a knack for love songs, but, as demonstrated in the 2008 album Not Animal, Edwards finds his stride in melancholy. GE/VD was a sweet album — with songs like “Off to See the World” verging on cloying — but it only teased at the edge that defined Margot’s previous work. Without an edge, the sweetness of songs like “Off to See the World” and “Love” made Margot’s atmospheric quality seem shallower — not less genuine, but simply less whole. 

And the album wasn’t whole — at least, not on the day of its release in 2022. “Ketamine,” the third track of the album and that around which the album arguably centers, was written when Edwards was receiving ketamine treatments in Chicago for stomach pains. This song, which is about falling in love, was built off a foundation of pain. While Edwards sings of a passionate love, the song’s built-up layering and measured pace allude to a deeper sensation; His voice resonates yearning and nostalgia for something hidden within the beauty he describes in his love. There’s an eerie sense of mortality imbued within the saccharinity of Edwards’s lyrics: “This time I’m hoping it’s enough,” Edwards sings, “I wanna know you till the whole hog expires / The world goes to fire / And there’s nothing left but ocean.” It is the notion of mortality that makes life worth living. It is this sense of finitude that gives each word — each note — its gravity. “[‘Ketamine’ became] the centerpiece of an album about love and time,” Edwards writes, “Which must be what all records are about.” Somehow, however, the two words seem synonymous. Love is nothing if not bounded by time. And within the same concept, there is a hidden third word: pain. At the time of its release, Ghost Electricity/Vampire Draw capitalized on its sentimental lyrics, atmospheric instrumentation and mellow, haunting vocals to paint a story of exactly what Edwards intended: love and time. But pain and death is left unstated, implied only through each deliberate lyric and reverberating piano line. 

The album was good, but the proverbial tent was left unzipped, leaving an uncomfortable breeze. The truth was, Edwards had written three more songs: “Neighborhood Girl With Dog,” “Benzedrine” and “Bacall.” “I assembled a version of the album without the three songs that I was convinced would curse it or me,” he wrote. It’s easy to see why. The lyrics in “Neighborhood Girl With Dog” immediately strike a listener as less familiar given the context of the album. The lyrics sing more of dependence and obsession than love: “Your head, but mine / Chimpanzee time / Swing me, little monkey, gimme heart attack,” Edwards sings. He has lost control over himself, completely under the duress of the “neighborhood girl with dog.” His life is no longer his. His love, for the first time in the album, manifests in the loss of himself. “Benzedrine” and “Bacall” are both songs explicitly about pain. In “Benzedrine,” Edwards sings of a breakup: “I’ve been feeling your ghost / Lasso-d from the moon.” “Bacall” is a song about death, inspired by one of Edwards’s screenplays. To Edwards, the songs were a risk: “The album about love and time became an album about love and time and death.” He would later realize that to tell a story of love and time and death was the only way to tell a complete story. Because, in the end, love and time and death define life itself.

In Dec. 2023, Edwards added the three songs to the album in an attempt to resolve the discomfort left by the loose strings. And, on Jan. 24, 2025, he released the final, Deluxe edition, comprising 27 songs and multiple different remixes of the songs from 2022 and 2023. “I’m sure it feels finished now,” Edwards writes, “It feels like a complete work and as essential as anything I’ve made to me.” Beneath all of its instrumental layers, imaginative lyrics and haunting melodies, Ghost Electricity/Vampire Draw tells a melancholic story of love and time and death, and, above all, life.

Yaelin Hough is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at [email protected].