Luka Bloom: The Hungry Ghost
[purchase]
Irish singer-songwriter Luka Bloom is generally found among the folk crowd, but then, they define folk differently on the far side of the pond. To these American ears, there's something perfectly 80s new wave about this track, like a B-side Midge Ure ballad: slack, jangly string accents driving the production, the haunting ebb and flow lyrics, the driving drumbeat and the wailed, echoing chorus fading away into the majestic haze of sound from which it first emerged.
Hungry ghosts are spirits driven by passion or desire; in many belief systems, they actually feed off human emotions. Like much of Bloom's influence, they are found throughout the Eastern religions, especially Buddhism, Taoism and Hindusim.
