"The first song I ever wrote was called "Daddy, The Noise and The Plumber,"" Glass Ghost vocalist/keyboardist/synthmaster Eliot Krimsky explains, "I wrote it with my first piano teacher. It was about a flood that happened in our house when I was 6 years old; one day the pipe burst in the ceiling of my room and there was water everywhere! My teacher and I made up a narrative together based on this flood, and I made improvisations to go along with the story. I remember performing the song and ending with a mysterious 'Dun Da Dun Dun.'"

Nothing like getting an early start. And Eliot hasn't slowed down much at all since those very early days; neither has his bandmate, drummer Mike Johnson. The two previously worked together in another band called Flying - but it's their debut set as Glass Ghost (Idol Omen, released in September of 2009) that has critics and fans buzzing.

"The Same" features Johnson's avalanche of tempo, while "Like a Diamond" showcases Krimsky's emotionally-wrought side, and "Ending" - appropriately the final track on the album - skips along darkly in yet another of the band's bouts with the quirkiest of pop arrangements. The '80s-reminiscent, forward-reaching set recalls both Talk Talk and Scritti Politti, while isolating Krimsky's unusually off-kilter vocals and Johnson's deftly haphazard drumbeats.

Johnson got just about as early of a start at drumming as Krimsky did with his songwriting, his interest initially piqued by a classic rock song.

"I think that it might have been Led Zeppelin," Johnson chuckles, "I was talking to someone today at a coffee shop, and we were observing that we were hearing "Stairway to Heaven" for the second time since we sat down - and that two "Stairway to Heavens" was too many for one cup of coffee. The guy I was talking to said that as a kid, he used to think about what the first thing would be that he would do if he could sit down at a drumset; I remembered that the first thing I did was play that fill from "Stairway to Heaven." I didn't take it too seriously at first. But my brother had an electric guitar, and we started a band called Road Kill with some kids from the neighborhood - I think I was in fourth grade. We had a song called "Girls, Beer and Music," he laughs.

So - pretty much as inauspicious of a beginning as a song about plumbing. No wonder these two work so well together, even as they go against the typical "rock-band lineup" by sticking to their own format as a true (and cool) indie-rock "duo," a performers' term otherwise associated with lounges at roadside hotels.

"i remember a day when me and Eliot first started jamming, just the two of us," Johnson remembers, "we had a song we were doing called "Walls" (which we started playing again, pretty successfully I think, on this last tour), and we were just starting to play the song "Divisions." We were in our old living room just kind of jamming those tunes, and I remember thinking that it sounded really good with just the two of us, and maybe people would actually like it."

"For a while, we kept trying to figure out who we could get to play with us, and we still think about that sometimes," Johnson continues, "but we kind of just kept playing as the two of us, and then we got a record deal with a really cool label and we've done tons of really cool shows - and it's still just the two of us. Sometimes it is really hard to be kind of unconventional - it can be especially hard when we're playing with more straight-ahead rock groups, or groups that produce a lot of sound. So far though, I've really enjoyed the challenge, and I feel like it's forced me to work extra hard on music this year."

The limited lineup works for Krimsky's musical sensibilities, as well.

"When we started playing songs like "Divisions" and "Like a Diamond" early on, I realized that the parts spoke for themselves," Krimsky says, "at the time, our set up was just Wurlitzer and drums, and those songs really started to interweave with each other in a way that left all of this space, yet felt complete. I remember listening back to the practice tapes around then, and feeling that the space of the music really worked. It has been intimidating, and at times very hard to open for big rock bands; it feels like audiences sometimes are expecting a bigger sound. But the other side of that is that when we are playing with rock bands, we are not what people expect, which is definitely a good thing."

Both Krimsky and Johnson make sure that they have their fave pieces of gear with them for both recording and performance purposes, whether they're close to home or on the road.

"My snare drum is the only thing that I use that's actually mine," Johnson says, "it's really nice, and I wouldn't record without it. Everything else that I've got is on loan from very nice people," he laughs.

"My Moog Prodigy is really special to me," Krimsky affirms, "it's my left hand, and it supplies the low sub bass; it sounds really warm and human although it is electronic; it's also old and wooden, and you just can't beat it."

Both musicians already have fave songs to play live...

"I think my favorite song to play on the most recent tour was "Mechanical Life,"" Johnson says, "we were on tour with White Rabbits, and on that song Matt, Brian and Jamie from White Rabbits joined us playing drums. It got to sounding really good with all the drums playing together, especially by the end of the tour. They're really great players."

... and "Mechanical Life" proved to be an all-round top pick for both bandmates.

"Yeah, "Mechanical Life" seemed to be a showstopper on the tour, because of all of the energy with three of the White Rabbits playing with us," Krimsky confirms, "it was so fun and exhilarating. The tour was very exhausting, but musically it went really well; I think by the end of the tour, we got a lot more comfortable playing in front of different audiences, and were able to adapt easier to what we needed sound wise.  I think a better comfort level made us play better and feel more confident."