My Ghosts Go Ghost is the debut album from By Storm, two thirds of celebrated alternative hip-hop group Injury Reserve.
Sometimes a ghost isn’t a haunting, it’s simply a reminder of what was.
My Ghosts Go Ghost is the debut album from By Storm, two thirds of celebrated alternative hip-hop group Injury Reserve. After the passing of member Stepa J. Groggs in 2020, RiTchie and Parker Corey decided to put the Injury Reserve name to rest. Three years later they returned as a duo, naming themselves after the closing track on Injury Reserve’s final album in memory of their fallen friend.
Despite the new name, this album isn’t a forgetting of what came before. Though neither is it stuck in a memory of the past. Corey and RiTchie are content to let the album simply be what it is. Created in large part through live improvisation while touring, the songs are reflections of various different thoughts and concerns. But as they play out in sequence, the story of the record begins to unfold.
My Ghosts Go Ghost begins with gentle guitar plucking nestled in a comforting lo-fi fuzz. It’s serene – and lonely. It feels like sitting around a campfire in the middle of a desert. Empty landscape stretches out in every direction until it fades into the night sky. The air is completely still, as if outside of the beating of your heart and the gentle flicker of the fire time itself has stopped. As you look around the endless night begins to feel like an anchor keeping you stuck. The loops of guitars and stumbling percussion lead you in circles, always taking you back to the fire. Even RiTchie’s rapping starts to melt into repeating words and phrases, the lines of thought merely chasing their own tails instead of reaching any destination.
Exhausted from the futile effort of trying to get back to where you were, or trying to get somewhere new, you lie down next to the fire. And for the first time, you look up, and are met with a view of thousands of lights hanging above you. As you gaze longer you begin to distinguish the different bodies, noticing how the planets reflect the light emitted from the stars they orbit. You see the varying shades of deep blue and purple that paint the empty spaces between. Look closer and you can make out a satellite drifting across the sky, and as you stare at it you even think you can faintly hear the radio waves it’s sending out. A message received from some unknown being in another place.
Watching this cosmic kaleidoscope unfold, you start to let go of the desire to return to where you used to be, as well as the need to find somewhere new to go. They’re distractions, preventing you from seeing where you are. The things that came before aren’t gone, you can still see them in the marks they left in the sand. The things that are yet to come manifest overhead, where the slow but constant movement of stars is a reassurance that sunrise is inevitable. So until then the best thing to do is to simply be, to exist in the everpresent, and appreciate the beauty of the night.
Corey and RiTchie don’t need to use the Injury Reserve name in order for all of their past knowledge and experiences to inform their new creations. Just as they don’t need to be concerned with reception, legacy and the future to make something that stands out. By Storm exist in the present, and My Ghosts Go Ghost is dedicated to right now. And right now. …And right now.
Words by Jim Kretschmer