“Ghost” is so firmly, fiercely a Shilpa Ray song from the very beginning. It opens with Ray a playing a gentle, almost tentative riff on her Mellotron, the sound eerie and comforting at the same time. Then the vocals kick in. Multiple people are harmonizing, but Ray’s powerful voice dominate, less by the vagaries of the mix than the assertiveness and expertise of her tone. No one else sounds like her no matter how many comparisons are made, whether those to Patti Smith that have been part of Ray’s press from the jump or her own evocations of Linda Ronstadt and Karen Carpenter in her assessment of this track.

The song builds and swells, almost taking on a romantic vibe as the lyrics extol the virtues of going conspicuously absent from a bad relationship, especially in the face of attempts by the other party to reconcile: “I don’t need a pardon/ To disappear from your view/ There’s nothing left to abuse/ I’m floating on to the greenest pastures/ Lucky cause I’ve lost you.” It’s majestic and pointed, absolutely infused with the certainty of self. It’s what Shilpa Ray does.