GHOST BEES at the Gladstone (1214 Queen West), Friday (June 18), 9 pm. $15 or NXNE wristband/pass. And at C’est What (67 Front East), Friday (June 18), midnight. $10 or NXNE wristband/pass. nxne.com.
Identical twins Sari and Romy Lightman, aka Ghost Bees, are polite, soft-spoken and quite charming in person. But there’s something strangely disconcerting about the way they communicate wordlessly, as if they’re having a private conversation. Good thing the pair relish reactions to their twin weirdness.
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“I don’t think we creep each other out, but I do think we creep other people out,” says Sari as she shares a sandwich with her sister. “We can definitely be creepy at times.”
Their music pits ethereal melodies against dark, gory subject matter. Parents, be warned: this might be what happens when you expose sweet young girls to horror movies at an early age, as the Lightmans’ father did.
On Through A Glass Darkly, their just-finished follow-up to 2008’s Tasseomancy, they tone down the folk influences and beef up the atmospherics. It was produced by Timber Timbre’s Taylor Kirk and Simon Trottier, who will back them up at the Gladstone.
They’re also about to change their name to Tasseomancy, a word for the art of reading tea leaves.
“Ghost Bees was a childhood inside joke for us and kind of a secret,” explains Romy. “It feels like we’ve outgrown that name. This album is just so much heavier and darker than what we’ve previously done.”
