Featuring former members of The Dials, Telenovela and The Returnables, Chicago, IL-based indie rock trio The Pamphleteers, comprised of Rebecca Crawford (bass, vocals), Geoff Atkinson (drums) and Jonathan Ben-Isvy (guitar) can trace their origins to playing together in a series of bands for the better part of a decade, to friendships that go back further than that — and to a tragic event that ultimately ended their primary projects and had them reeling: back in 2005, an suicide attempt/international car crash took the lives of three Chicago musicians, Crawford’s husband John Glick, who was also Ben-Isvy’s bandmate in The Returnables, Crawford’s bandmate in The Dials, Doug Meis and Michael Dahlquist of Silkworm, who was a mutual friend of every member of both bands.
Although reeling from such profound loss, the surviving members of all of those bands, decided that to best pay respect to their dead friends was to continue forward with music; and in fact, it’s been an opportunity for Crawford and Ben-Isvy to find joy and move forward as best as they could. “Shivering,” is the first single off the band’s soon-to-be released full-length debut Ghost That Follows, which is slated for a September 23, 2016 release, and the single consists of shimmering and angular guitar chords paired with propulsive drumming, tumbling bass line, Crawford’s plaintive and urgent vocals and an anthemic hook in a song that sounds as though it were inspired by 80s post-punk — but at its core the song feels simultaneously joyous over small pleasures and haunted by the ghosts of their friends and loved ones and the recognition that some losses linger forever.
