Much of Omaha songsmith Simon Joyner's extensive catalog is filled with moody meditations on our place in the world, and while his existential questing continues unabated on Ghosts, he ratchets up the intensity of the music to match the emotional temperature of the topics (mortality, chaotic relationships). Not only are the veteran singer/songwriter's poetic powers undiminished here, they gain extra impact from the biting, discordant touches the production introduces. Even on what are ostensibly ballads, the barbed-wire guitar riffs and tension-filled keyboard lines add an anxious urgency without obscuring the graceful beauty of Joyner's lyricism.