Anyone heard of Tasseomancy (AKA Ghost Bees)?

July 5, 2010

Liz Caruso

This is a long overdue post, a band I've been wanting to write about for a while, a band that devoured my early half of 2009. If you've never heard of Tasseomancy or Ghost Bees in your life, then I'd like to introduce you to Sari and Romy Lightman, a pair of identical twins from Halifax, Canada with a knack for spine-tingling harmonies and dark lyricism.

The sisters initially captured my fancy with their intricate lyrics, combined with the picking acoustics of their mandolin and guitar and the high-pitched, nearly identical voices swirling together in the most perfectly harmonic combination. I spent hours on end deciphering the lyrics, learning some interesting facts about the girls in the process. For instance, they were both raised in a household that valued old horror movies above everything, they were both always interested in the supernatural as a result, and both - but Romy especially - feel an intense connection to their ancestors.

What actually prompted this post to finally be written was the discovery that the two had changed their name from the original Ghost Bees to Tasseomancy, which incidentally shares the title of their first EP. Romy has recently said in an interview that, "Ghost Bees was a childhood inside joke for us and kind of a secret. It feels like we've outgrown that name. This album is just so much heavier and darker than what we've previously done." It makes sense, especially after reading up on the extensive research Romy has done on her great-great grandmother, whom their song "Tasseomancy" was written for - an eighteen year old woman at the time, who lost her parents in the pogroms, married twice her age, then lost a son to another pogrom before moving to Canada. Tasseomancy was their great-great grandmother's talent, her way of making money through rough times, so the word contains a special meaning for the duo.

Fingers crossed that their new album will be released soon. I can't wait to hear what the even darker, more mature, more atmospheric sound is like.