Crucial Track for January 25, 2026

"Sleep Gets Your Ghost" by Buke and Gase

#365songs (25 / 365)

Shout out to my friend Will, who turned me on to Buke and Gase back when they still spelled their band name "Buke and Gass." That was because it's short for "bass ukulele" and "guitar-bass" but apparently everyone (reasonably) mispronounced "gass" as "gas" rather than, uh, "gase," so they changed the spelling after their first album Riposte.

"Sleep Gets Your Ghost" is my favorite track off that first album, though it's in close competition with like 5 or 6 others: there are many high points on Riposte and they are high indeed. But this one in particular has many things I love. Aside from the divinely crunchy sounds of the homemade instruments played by Arone and Aron (the real names of the two members of this band) (I am not making this up), which feature on every song here, "Sleep Gets Your Ghost" has the following: a short intro reprised at the song's end. Some shit in 12/8 time over a chord progression which might be weird, or not, but definitely has some kind of very weird voicing that you're only gonna get on a gase. Weird, elastic vocal melody sung in a striking, piercing voice. Two very different parts glued together by an angular instrumental and a section in 5/4. A climax made up of a super earworm-y melody over a raucous stomp in 6/4 that they run almost into the ground before pulling it back to that reprise of the intro. I love the melody in the "ghost in my head" part so much. I love this song so much!