(Reybee) With the powerful opening beat of the kick drum, Omaha's post-rock masters Leafblower launch into their new preternatural single "Ghosts" which is released today, August 14, 2025 via Max Trax Records. Taken from their latest album Burn Cruise which was released in June 2025, the song had an appropriately ominous origin. "The lyrics for the song were written in the wee hours of the night," confesses vocalist/guitarist Danny Maxwell. "I couldn't sleep, so I got up and watched some TV. I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, then I felt a warming presence near me, though I didn't feel threatened."
While the supernatural often ushers in dread and fear, for Leafblower, it was instead embraced not only with open arms but with a seat at the writing table. "My first thought was 'What's all the fuss about?' My second was to scribble it all down." Taking a breather from the paranormal, Maxwell grounded himself and fleshed out the rest of the lyrics in a more earthbound mindset. "I came back to that thought later and was able to bridge it with another lyric about feeling bottled up with scattered thoughts and emotions until it all comes to a head for the second half of the song."
Adding the words to drummer Tab Tworek's music, they created a track that couples a powerful rhythm section of Tworek and bassist/theremin/vocalist Craig Fort with Clark Jahn's searing guitars and Maxwell's ice-piercing vocals. The result is a gritty power jam of ace musicianship in lockstep.
Accompanied by a surreal video starring their aged octogenarian mascot "Tim" who had been a common star of their social media presence, going about his every day activities, like delivering babies, jumping in puddles, taking the aforementioned baby on errands, fastened in a BabyBjorn, and, in a rather meta sequence, using a leafblower. "When we first started, we posted daily shorts of our guy, 'Tim,' doing everyday things," laughs Fort. "He gained a decent following and we did it for a few years, but his appearance in the videos started to peter out." Instead of letting Tim's memory languish in the annals of social media archives, they mined their old vids and used excerpts for the "Ghosts" video.
"Tim is our mascot," continues Maxwell. "We had a run of 200+ consecutive posts on Instagram and Facebook featuring these little 7-second skits of Tim doing anything from everyday activities like skating, preparing meals, and landscaping duties to extraordinary moments like doing the wave at an empty ballpark and lying still enough to feed a wild fox a chicken leg."
The result is a haunting and somewhat surreal montage of sped up vignettes with Tim in the foreground. "Life is gonna come at you no matter what your plans are, and there's nothing you can do but put your head down, bulldoze through, and you might as well have a good time while you're at it," says Fort metaphorically. "I didn't set out with a theme when I started the video, but I think it developed into a picture of a very hectic example of our daily lives and finding ways to make the best of it."
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