Stewing blues, smirking pop-punk, discordant grunge: the soundtrack of misfits and the macabre has no single form when it’s created by Phantom Ocean. Working with a sonic palette that’s as broad as the duo’s respective skill sets, the Salem shapeshifters find common ground in cultivating a reprieve for the undesired. Whether that sounds like a peppy spoof on music scene tropes, a grim reckoning with mental health, or a fantastical dirge about cryptids just depends on the time of day. 

Creative partners Drew and Sarah Smith founded Phantom Ocean in 2020 on the precipice of life-altering events: the COVID-19 pandemic and their marriage, in that order. But as the world drastically changed in the band’s formative months, they morphed along with it. Phantom Ocean’s debut EP Secondhand Ghosts remixes elements of the pair’s musical foundations, layering Sarah’s classic vocal training and pep band drum chops with Drew’s Jersey-raised appreciation of classic rock, punk, and heavy blues guitar tones. 

The 2024 EP Phantasmagoria shakes up their storytelling again with vignettes crafted from garage grit and leaden guitar riffs, soon followed by the ominous single “Carfax Abbey,” a vampiric tale that’s more grounded in reality than it seems.

The pair share an unabashed flair for the theatrical – look no further than “Notice Me Senpai” or “I’m With The Band” – but also a grounded sense of compassion. Just as the blues and pop-punk make unlikely neighbors on Phantom Ocean’s projects, so does their biting satire and plunges into life’s murkier moments. 

The gritty Phantasmagoria deep cut “She God” says it all: “Say a body is a temple, well mine’s a dumpster fire,” Sarah quips, before delivering the sobering followup “pick the flesh until it bleeds, ‘til the skin feels like barbed wire.” It’s a gag, it’s a warning, it’s empowerment through facing darkness head-on. It’s pure Phantom Ocean.