Music / Ghost Quartet

The cover of the live album

"I don't know if this is me at all,
Or just some ghost of me that I dreamed up
Just to sing myself to sleep,
Or someone that I used to be,
Or someone that I will be,
Or someone that I am right now..."

— I Don't Know

Ghost Quartet is a song cycle/concept album/musical performance written by Dave Malloy and performed by Malloy, Brent Arnold, Brittain Ashford, and Gelsey Bell, described by Malloy as "a song cycle about death, love, and whiskey". The show was critically acclaimed in an off-Broadway engagement in 2014, and has since toured across the United States and in Scotland.

In March 2020, in response to the closing of theaters due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Malloy released a full, professionally-shot recording of the show for free. You can watch it here.

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Tropes:

• All There in the Script: The regular speech parts ("Midnight", "Monk", "Family Meeting", and the beginning of "The Camera Shop” and “Tango Dancer”) are all excluded from the cast album but are present in the complete score and on the live album.
• Anachronic Order: It takes a few listens to follow the overall timeline and point where each timeline changes or interweaves with another one.
• Anti-Love Song: "Soldier & Rose" seems like a pretty little love song until Rose shoots the Soldier in the head and takes her pot of honey to pay the Bear.
• Audience Participation Song: Audience members get various percussion instruments to play in "Any Kind of Dead Person."
  • At the end of "The Wind and Rain," the performers hand their instruments off to the audience and leave. They aren't encouraged to keep playing, but the performers don't return for their bows until the music has completely stopped.
  • During "Four Friends," whiskey is passed out to audience members.
• Author Appeal: Intricate harmonies, cast members playing a myriad of instruments, audience percussion, and drinking all show up here and in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812.
• Bears Are Bad News: Played with. The bear in Pearl's game is the final boss, but the Bear in the Two Sisters timeline isn't evil so much as he is lazy and dishonest.
• Call-Back / Call-Forward: This being a circular story, the lyrics are riddled with them:
  • The lyrics "Let me read you a story/Let me read you a romance/I will read, you will listen/And this terrible night will pass" first appear in "I Don't Know," and return much later in "Usher, Pt. 3" as Edgar Usher tries to calm his wife's madness.
  • The owner of the camera shop mentions that the fiddle on her wall is made from a breastbone. Only much later, at the end of the show, do we learn that the breastbone belonged to Pearl White.
  • Roxie Usher is in mourning over the disappearance of her daughter, Starchild. Edgar offhandedly notes that the father was "an astronomer of some renown."
  • "Fathers & Sons" has the Fool say to his father that he's going to "play cello in a rock & roll band"; come "Usher, Pt. 3," we learn he's gone to New York to do just that. He also says that if anybody pushes him, he's gonna push right back, connecting him to the Pusher in the Subway timeline.
    • Moreover, the Pusher pushes Pearl right after she strikes the Bear on his side.
  • The boss in the game on Pearl's phone in the Subway timeline is a bear, and her character is a soldier. "I Don't Know" also mentions playing games on your phone on the subway.
  • Shah Zaman's lines in "Bad Men" imply that he is the man in Iran that the Astronomer sings about in "The Astronomer".
  • "Hero" especially is filled with these, which is fitting, considering it's the last song in the main plot.
• Concept Album: Ghost Quartet began as this, and when it was adapted to the stage, it kept some of the quirks of an album. Each song is announced live as "Side [blank], Track [blank]": for example, "I Don't Know" is Side 1, Track 1.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Rose wants the Bear to maul the Astronomer and turn her sister Pearl into a crow, then to put them into a cave until the crow starves, at which point she'll have no choice but to peck out his eyes and eat them.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Bear balks at fulfilling Rose's request to kill the Astronomer and turn Pearl into a crow. As he says, he is not a murderer or a crazy person, he just likes honey. Never mind that he just threatened to eat Rose after she brought him the things he wanted.
• Forgiveness: One of the key themes of the show. "Hero" has Rose thinking about her actions over the course of the show and vowing to "let the dead be dead." Additionally, "Midnight", the next song, has Pearl and the Pusher reconcile, now that they are no longer those versions of themselves.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: There are four main timelines (Arabian Nights, Two Sisters, Usher, and Subway) that the story returns to at will, though they tend to overlap, and even intersect (as in "Usher, Pt. 3").
• "I Am" Song: "Starchild" and "The Astronomer"
• Last Note Nightmare: There are a good few throughout the show:
  • "Usher, Pt. 2" is a pretty eerie song throughout, with the song being the death scene of Roxie. It starts off average enough, with Lord Usher (Dave) narrating that on the night Roxie died, his "wife sang our son played his guitar", noting that they played "wild improvisations, dirges and waltzes, fevered rhapsodies" before the song slams into this discordant mess with Lady Usher (Gelsey) and The Fool (Brent) loudly singing: "THE STONES ARE ALIVE, THE STONES ARE ALIVE! THE DECAYING TREES! THE BOOKS ON THE WALL, THE BOOKS ON THE WALL! THE CONDENSATION ON THE WINDOW! ON THE WINDOW! IT IS ALL ALIVE! ALL ALIVE!" before all the instruments suddenly drop out and the cast sings "the driver can't stop, the ghost is here." until we suddenly cut back into Roxie's death scene. It becomes normal and melancholic with Lady Usher operatically wailing "O, Roxie, why did you have to die? I forgive you." she sings "O, Roxie" two more times until suddenly calling Roxie "Rose". The music suddenly goes into a dissonant crescendo with loud drumming and harp glissandos as she announces that "I SHALL PRESERVE HER CORPSE A FORTNIGHT WITHIN THE VAULT UNDERNEATH OUR BEDROOM."
  • "Usher, Pt. 3" isn't much better. It's pretty normal at first, jumping between the Subway and Usher timelines, showing us the conclusion of the Usher arc where it's revealed that Roxie was Buried Alive in the vault, and she gets out and kills her mother, and we find out more about the game The Victim (a.k.a: Pearl) (Gelsey) was playing before they were pushed onto the subway tracks. After the end of the Usher section, it goes back into the game, where we get to the Pusher attacking [[spoiler Pearl.]] After The Pusher (Brent) sings that "The Pusher couldn't help himself" and the cast says that "And the Pusher pushed Pearl onto the subway track.", The Victim sings "Pushed me into the path of the screaming TRAIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!!!!", being the one of the highest notes Gelsey hits during the show (a B5). A cymbal crashes, and the rest of the cast plays a Drone of Dread as she goes into a creepy-as-hell monologue from both the perspectives of Lady Usher and The Victim. As the monologue ends, the drone goes into a loud crescendo before cutting off, going into the A Cappella song "Prayer".
• Last Request: The Soldier wants Rose to dance with her, then take her into a back alley and shoot her. Rose, only in it for the pot of honey the Soldier has, obliges.
• Lazy Bum: The Bear wants a pot of honey. Rather than get it himself, he has Rose go on a quest spanning multiple centuries and lifetimes to get him one, along with some other things. And then once he gets the honey pot, he reneges on his deal to maul the Astronomer and turn Pearl into a crow.
• Leitmotif: A particular melody for piano and cello is played in each of the “Usher” songs.
• Live Album: Live at the McKittrick, which includes the interstitial dialogue scenes and the intro to "The Camera Shop". The McKittrick Hotel is home to a performance art piece of its own, Sleep No More, and if you listen closely, you can hear it going on during the show.
• Lonely Piano Piece: "Hero," towards the end.
• Lyrical Cold Open: "I Don't Know" starts with Dave's voice before the other singers, and then instruments, join in.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The happy, jazzy beat of "Fathers & Sons" is almost enough to make the listener forget that it's about parental neglect and drug abuse.
• Melismatic Vocals: An impressive, notable one at the beginning of "Soldier & Rose."
• Merged Reality: Rose's quest to find the items the Bear requires take her to both past and future, and every timeline sets up the one after it so that Rose and Pearl have nearly every relationship possible between two women.
• Mind Screw: The interactions between the various incarnations of everybody are often this. For example: Rose takes the baby for the secret baptism from Roxie Usher, who is Rose. The Starchild, Roxie's baby, is also Rose. And Roxie's not-so-imaginary imaginary friend as a child is...also Rose. How many people has Rose been?
• Non-Linear Character: Rose seems to originally belong to somewhere in the early modern era, where there are telescopes and a rudimentary understanding of astronomy, but she can travel with ease back to Scheherazade's time or forward to the modern era.
• Noodle Implements: The Bear requires one pot of honey, one piece of stardust, one secret baptism, and a photo of a ghost to perform what Rose asks of him. Or so he claims. All he really wants is the honey.
• Ode to Intoxication: "Four Friends" and, to some extent, "Fathers & Sons."
• One-Man Band: Each member of the quartet plays a collection of instruments, in addition to and sometimes at the same time as singing.
• One-Woman Wail: Gelsey Bell's periodic ghostly screeching (especially during "The Photograph").
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: In "Bad Men," Rose Red delivers one of these shortly after discovering the Astronomer was cheating on her with her sister, Pearl White.
  Rose Red: I always knew you were shallow, I always knew you didn't know me, I always knew you didn't believe in me, I always knew that I bored you, I always knew I wasn't pretty enough for you, I always knew you'd go with someone smarter than me, I always knew your mind was elsewhere, I always knew you were a snob, I always knew your head was in the stars, I always knew you and your books, you and your fucking books! I am not a puzzle! I am not a fucking logic puzzle for you to figure out! I am not a fucking game! Why don't you just go fuck all your books? Why don't you just go fuck all your fucking books, and we'll see who's smarter! We'll see!
• Reincarnation: The four characters in each timeline are all implied to be past and/or future versions of themselves in the others.
• Reincarnation Romance: It seems that the incarnations of the Astronomer and Rose Red are destined to love each other, no matter the timeline. This works out much better in the Subway timeline than it does in the Two Sisters timeline.
• Retroactive Recognition: Malloy, Ashford, and Bell are much more popular now, thanks to the Broadway debut of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. which Malloy wrote (and occasionally stars in) and Ashford and Bell feature in.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In between "Usher, Pt. 2" and "Usher, Pt. 3," the Fool runs off to New York City with his cello.
• Shout-Out: Per Dave, the part in "The Camera Shop" where the Bear lists his demands ("One pot of honey," etc.) is a direct reference to Into the Woods, right down to the way the piano in the background sounds.
• Stable Time Loop: The Camera Shop Owner's assurance to Rose that "this is a circular story" in "The Camera Shop" and the line "This has all happened before" in "Usher, Pt. 3" seem to imply that the whole story is this.
  Rose: Do you remember when we used to go up to your treehouse? Look at the stars through your telescope?
  The Astronomer: I don't actually think that's happened yet.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: The album is best appreciated by a listener familiar with Arabian Nights, Wind in the Pines, The Brothers Grimm, The Fall of the House of Usher, Ulysses, Thelonious Monk, The Twilight Zone (1959), Into the Woods, astronomy, and, of course, whiskey.