Ghost Story

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If the Girl Is a Ghost were like most bands, the opportunity to sign to a label, record on the company’s dime and get international distribution would’ve been a dream come true. But for guitarist and singer Oscar Allen and keyboardist Susan Metenosky, success was never part of the plan. Then again, the longtime friends never really had a plan in the first place.

“We were just having fun,” Allen says. “All of our first songs were just about playing video games and fucking around.”

That’s what made it seem so odd, then, when the pair — along with drummer James Capps and bass player Derek Solsberg — was offered a deal in spring 2005 with Australia’s Baria Records, home to U.S. band the Heavenly States.

What the foursome didn’t know at the time was that signing to the label would be the beginning of the end.

In the fall of ’05, a few months after signing the Girl Is a Ghost, the label flew the band to Oakland, California, to record what would have been its first full-length. (A previous album was recorded locally but never released.)

Unfortunately, the band’s Baria recording would never see daylight, at least not from the Baria camp. After returning from California, the band started getting hints from label founder Eugene Bari that the album wasn’t what he was looking for. Words such as noisy and phrases like not marketable began to waft up from the Southern Hemisphere.

“I don’t really think it’s that weird,” Allen says, defending his creation. “If anything, we used to get made fun of for being too poppy, so I never thought that we’d be getting flack from somebody for being too noisy.”

For a band that never intended to sign a label contract, having the opportunity waved under their collective nose and then torn away was bittersweet.

“We got really excited because these people wanted us to make a record, and then they flew us out to California to do the record, and we were really happy with it,” Allen says. “But then it didn’t really pan out, and the changes they wanted us to make, we didn’t want to make, so it’s kind of frustrating.”

If any good came from the split, it’s that Baria let the band keep the masters of their songs at no charge, allowing the opportunity to shop the album around or self-release it. This is exactly what the band did, using about a grand of its own money to finish mixing it at Black Lodge Studios in Eudora.

But even though the album will most likely survive, the band itself is in jeopardy. In October, Metenosky announced that she was leaving. Her last show will be Thursday at the Record Bar — exactly four years to the day after the band’s first performance.

“If things had really worked out well for us, it’s possible that I might feel differently, but I don’t think that’s the main issue,” she says about her departure. “I never really planned on being a musician — it just kind of fell into my lap. I’ve just really decided this isn’t what I want to do with my life.”

So the girl is a ghost. What that means for the future of the rest of the band is anybody’s guess.