Aural Aggravation

6th October 2026

Leeds grungers Pulled Apart by Horses celebrated punching a lion in the throat on their breakthrough single: Massachusetts darkwavers Ghost Painted Sky eschew such violence, and on their latest ‘maxi-single’ release, are all about kissing them.

The inverted commas around the format are by no means intended as mockery or derision: I remember well when the maxi-single was a specific format, initially on 12” and, later, CD,and differentiated from the EP, which usually featured four or five tracks. The maxi usually consisted of an extended version of the A side / single, the single version, plus the B-side. It was the standard from around the mid-80s until the late 90s, particularly in mainland Europe. And that old-school maxi is precisely what we get here from Ghost Kissing Sky – only digitally, of course.

Ghost Painted Sky (to refer to them by the acronym of GPS feels wrong and misleading – somewhat ironically) formed to create dark, introspective music, built on the foundational influences of trad goth, post-punk, and darkwave in 2014, and according to their bio, ‘their approach has always been to treat the music as a vehicle for processing life’s struggles and ultimately for catharsis, release, reflection, and rebirth’. So how does this fit with being smoochy with big cats? It hardly sounds bleak or gothy, even allowing for the fact The Cure did ‘The Lovecats’ (which was neither bleak nor gothy, but a fun, frivolous pop tune).

Founder and multi-instrumentalist David Strong explains that “‘Kissing Lions’ describes those mostly vain attempts to seize on anything that creates a fleeting feeling of being alive for a moment amid relentless waves of the humdrum, doldrums, and failure, which so often end up being misguided and ultimately just creating a thicker mire even more strangling than the original situation one sought to escape… bad decisions that bite back and create further downward spirals.” Ah, yes, that’s more like it!

And when it comes to the sound, ‘Kissing Lions’ is a swirling, brooding work, defined by a swelling, chorus-heavy bass, picked, reverby guitar, and sweeping synths, in a fashion highly reminiscent of The Cure circa Disintegration. The addition of violin adds depth and a further layer of mournfulness. And lyrically, it has all the hallmarks of quintessential goth – existential anguish, frustration, self-punishment:

Turn it off, this channel’s boring, see?

This is not how my life was supposed to be

So I take this poison inside of me

If it’s not three minutes and thirty three seconds of synthy gothy darkwave perfection, it’s got to be pretty close.

The ‘Effervescent Remix’ is not an extended version – in fact it’s a second shorter than the original – but is, as the title suggests, presents the song with a rather more buoyant slant with a synthy bassline replacing the original, bringing something of a Mixed Up vibe to it.

If a similar synth bass sound is repeated on the third track, ‘My Words Are Not My Own’, it’s to quite different effect, pulsing steadily and insistently alongside a metronomic beat and beneath a fractal guitar tones, and it’s all to good effect, and this is a tidy, neatly packaged taste of Ghost Painted Sky – and a perfect example of what the maxi-single was – is – all about.

AA