Shilpa Ray — Door Girl (Sept. 22nd, 2017) 
ζ→ “Door Girl” je přímočarý rock’n’rollový záznam → hoden vstupu do hudebního kánonu New Yorku. Lou Reed s New York, Patti Smith s Horses, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion s Freedom Tower — No Wave Dance Party 2015 [Stuart Berman 7.0] a mnoho dalších, to vše může být slyšeno v sebevědomém představení Ray zde na “Door Girl”. Ještě důležitější může být postoj Shilpy k fenoménu muzikality a hravosti. Přebírá vlastnictví konvencí rock ’n’rollu, uchopila je po svém, ať už se odkazuje na linku z Ginsbergovy poémy “Howl” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl), nebo na zádumčivý zpěv Patti Smith. “Chci to lehce,” zpívá v “Morning Terrors Nights of Dread”, na které jí (mužský) sbor odpovídá: “Chce to snadné.” Je snadné se domnívat, že Ray je skutečně v pohodě. Svými zkušenostmi v takových konkrétních pojmech podtrhuje svou univerzálnost. Závěrečné finále v My World Shatters by the BQE přesvědčí, že máme před sebou jedno z nejlepších alb roku 2017.
ζ→ Nobody grows up wanting to be an artist’s artist. Appreciated by the sub sect of the sub sect is like being the beauty queen at the leper colony.
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Genre: blues~punk & soul, Singer~songwriter
Album release: Sept. 22nd, 2017
Record Label: Northern Spy Records
Duration:
Tracks:
01 New York Minute Prayer 1:49
02 Morning Terrors Nights of Dread 4:27
03 Revelations of a Stamp Monkey 4:04
04 Add Value Add Time 5:34
05 EMT Police and the Fire Department 4:19
06 After Hours 4:35
07 Shilpa Ray’s Got a Heart Full of Dirt 4:02
08 Manhattanoid Creepazoids 2:51
09 Rockaway Blues 3:47
10 You’re Fucking No One 6:07
11 This Is Not a Dream Sequence 1:08
12 My World Shatters by the BQE 5:01
© ζ→ Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz
By Ian Thomas | September 20, 2017 | 9:12am | Score: 8.3
ζ→ There are moments on Shilpa Ray’s new album Door Girl in which the singer~songwriter’s perspective feels forced, her point~of~view too specific. When she chains her anecdotes to specific city blocks it can feel exclusive and alienating. She is writing about a niche experience, though. As an examination of working, living and loving in New York City, her self~centered focus is a necessary metaphor for city life. If you don’t make yourself the eye of the storm, you risk the damage of being caught in its winds.
ζ→ With her commanding presence and a penchant for spectacle, Shilpa Ray is a perfect fit for the job of assessing life in New York City. The title makes reference to the time she spent working the door at Pianos on the Lower East Side. The album finds Shilpa Ray struggling to make ends meet and hold onto her humanity, succeeding and failing in equal measure. She does so with humility and humor.
ζ→ Emotional exhaustion at the the hyper vigilance the city demands of its citizens is a constant presence on Door Girl. Suburban life is a constant temptation. Economic survival is at once menacing and banal. Compassion slips out the door before you know to miss it. “Don’t remember the last time that I helped someone/Don’t remember the last time I helped myself/Riding the tunnels with my horse blinders on/I’ve been standing clear of the closing doors like everyone else,” she muses over dreamy keys on “Add Value Add Time,” a meditation on the grind to stay afloat in the city. “Do you become a better person when you get out of here,” she asks. “Hudson Valley Real Estate says it’s so.” Staying in the city becomes a test of character. There is virtue in it, as the prayer bell that rings to mark the album’s opening will attest.
ζ→ On much of the album, Ray bemoans the constant need to protect the precious little personal space the city provides. The urgent need to maintain physical and emotional distance that life in close quarters wears on her palpably. “Watch a man getting choked on TV/Crying help, saying I can’t breathe/I’m at work acting like it never bothered me/Stamping drunks, disease of humanity.” She rhymes in hip~hop cadence on “Revelations of a Stamp Monkey.” In the end, such attempts are futile. To be in the city is to be of it. It seeps into everything. “It doesn’t even faze me anymore,” she concludes.
ζ→ The struggle is inevitable, intrinsic to working~class life in the city. For all it takes from her, it also gives her a visceral thrill to keep ahead of the curve. Notably absent from the narrative, however, are the very real consequences of a misstep, economic or otherwise. She can romanticize her survival, but only as long as she is surviving. She’s unapologetic about only addressing her own experience.
ζ→ Door Girl is a straightforward rock n’ roll record and a worthy entry into the canon of New York records. Lou Reed’s New York, Patti Smith’s Horses, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s underrated Freedom Tower — No Wave Dance Party 2015 and plenty of others can all be heard in Ray’s confident performances here. More importantly, their attitude can be felt in Ray’s playfulness. She takes ownership of the rock n’ roll conventions she takes up, whether it’s making reference to a line from Ginsberg’s Howl or cribbing Patti Smith’s yowl. “I want it easy,” she sings on “Morning Terrors Nights of Dread,” to which her (all male) chorus replies “She wants it easy.” It’s anything but, and it’s easy to suspect that Ray is actually fine with that. By accounting her experience in such specific terms, she underscores their universality. ζ→ https://www.pastemagazine.com/
Also:
JOE REITAN | September 21, 2017 | Score: ****½
ζ→ https://newnoisemagazine.com/review-shilpa-ray-door-girl/
About The Album
David Cotner
Girls Are Free.
ζ→ That’s what it says on a makeshift sign on the wall above Shilpa Ray’s head on her latest record, Door Girl. Sometimes in life it helps to take the signs one encounters literally. Girls are free to make mistakes. Girls are free to come and go. Girls are free of all those preconceived notions attached to what it is to be a girl. Gazing with a mixture of serenity and weary imperiousness beneath that sign is Shilpa Ray. Door Girl takes as its titular inspiration her time working the door at Lower East Side bar Pianos, its reputation one of hard~scrabble survival and the inspiration of desperation. Shilpa Ray has seen it all.
ζ→ Girls are free to bear witness.
ζ→ “Shilpa Ray Stars as Door Girl” beckons from the cover of Door Girl in pink neon — reminiscent of nothing less than the pink lipstick that spells out New York Dolls on the cover of their similarly explosive record. The seething frenzy of a feeding frenzy — the hallmark of closing time desperation — whirls around her on the cover, people moving past so quickly that they become a smear of obscurity even as she watches everything by the door. Or is it merely normal life, speeding across her hemisphere in that blasé and banal way that yields few treasures except those that only the most perceptive of all possible artists can dig out? Her song titles are gems that glitter with scorn — “Shilpa Ray’s Got a Heart Full of Dirt,” “You’re Fucking No One,” and “Morning Terrors Nights of Dread,” to name a few — and underscore how extortionately rare good song titles truly are.
ζ→ Girls are freed.
ζ→ Her voice — singular in modern popular music because of its radiant imperfection — takes neither prisoners nor guff as it offers up continuous caustic commentary on the human condition. Hers are observations gleaned from endless nights watching people in their natural habitat. These arenot pretty pictures, shot through as they are with violence in the obvious and menace in the failures. Alternately dreamlike and lifelike, Door Girl carves out its portraits of nightlife with reverberation and feedback, unveiling an expansive level of production quality through which even the perfectly~recorded snare drum is as present and as crisp as the bad breath of the drunk falling asleep at your elbow. Each instrument is so clearly defined in the presentation as to become one of those selfsame dive bar habitués on which Shilpa Ray shines a stark Klieg light of absolute truth. It is the story of a city as it lives and breathes at its most basic levels, as told by an artist who is equal parts musician and magician and for whom each song is a different life she has lived and breathed and experienced like few.
Bandcamp: https://shilparay.bandcamp.com/album/door-girl
Website: http://shilparay.net/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/shilparayisgod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shilpa.ray.9
Label: https://northernspyrecs.com/
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ζ→ Nobody grows up wanting to be an artist’s artist. Appreciated by the sub sect of the sub sect is like being the beauty queen at the leper colony.
Genre: blues~punk & soul, Singer~songwriter
Album release: Sept. 22nd, 2017
Record Label: Northern Spy Records
Duration:
Tracks:
01 New York Minute Prayer 1:49
02 Morning Terrors Nights of Dread 4:27
03 Revelations of a Stamp Monkey 4:04
04 Add Value Add Time 5:34
05 EMT Police and the Fire Department 4:19
06 After Hours 4:35
07 Shilpa Ray’s Got a Heart Full of Dirt 4:02
08 Manhattanoid Creepazoids 2:51
09 Rockaway Blues 3:47
10 You’re Fucking No One 6:07
11 This Is Not a Dream Sequence 1:08
12 My World Shatters by the BQE 5:01
By Ian Thomas | September 20, 2017 | 9:12am | Score: 8.3
ζ→ There are moments on Shilpa Ray’s new album Door Girl in which the singer~songwriter’s perspective feels forced, her point~of~view too specific. When she chains her anecdotes to specific city blocks it can feel exclusive and alienating. She is writing about a niche experience, though. As an examination of working, living and loving in New York City, her self~centered focus is a necessary metaphor for city life. If you don’t make yourself the eye of the storm, you risk the damage of being caught in its winds.
ζ→ With her commanding presence and a penchant for spectacle, Shilpa Ray is a perfect fit for the job of assessing life in New York City. The title makes reference to the time she spent working the door at Pianos on the Lower East Side. The album finds Shilpa Ray struggling to make ends meet and hold onto her humanity, succeeding and failing in equal measure. She does so with humility and humor.
ζ→ Emotional exhaustion at the the hyper vigilance the city demands of its citizens is a constant presence on Door Girl. Suburban life is a constant temptation. Economic survival is at once menacing and banal. Compassion slips out the door before you know to miss it. “Don’t remember the last time that I helped someone/Don’t remember the last time I helped myself/Riding the tunnels with my horse blinders on/I’ve been standing clear of the closing doors like everyone else,” she muses over dreamy keys on “Add Value Add Time,” a meditation on the grind to stay afloat in the city. “Do you become a better person when you get out of here,” she asks. “Hudson Valley Real Estate says it’s so.” Staying in the city becomes a test of character. There is virtue in it, as the prayer bell that rings to mark the album’s opening will attest.
ζ→ On much of the album, Ray bemoans the constant need to protect the precious little personal space the city provides. The urgent need to maintain physical and emotional distance that life in close quarters wears on her palpably. “Watch a man getting choked on TV/Crying help, saying I can’t breathe/I’m at work acting like it never bothered me/Stamping drunks, disease of humanity.” She rhymes in hip~hop cadence on “Revelations of a Stamp Monkey.” In the end, such attempts are futile. To be in the city is to be of it. It seeps into everything. “It doesn’t even faze me anymore,” she concludes.
ζ→ The struggle is inevitable, intrinsic to working~class life in the city. For all it takes from her, it also gives her a visceral thrill to keep ahead of the curve. Notably absent from the narrative, however, are the very real consequences of a misstep, economic or otherwise. She can romanticize her survival, but only as long as she is surviving. She’s unapologetic about only addressing her own experience.
ζ→ Door Girl is a straightforward rock n’ roll record and a worthy entry into the canon of New York records. Lou Reed’s New York, Patti Smith’s Horses, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s underrated Freedom Tower — No Wave Dance Party 2015 and plenty of others can all be heard in Ray’s confident performances here. More importantly, their attitude can be felt in Ray’s playfulness. She takes ownership of the rock n’ roll conventions she takes up, whether it’s making reference to a line from Ginsberg’s Howl or cribbing Patti Smith’s yowl. “I want it easy,” she sings on “Morning Terrors Nights of Dread,” to which her (all male) chorus replies “She wants it easy.” It’s anything but, and it’s easy to suspect that Ray is actually fine with that. By accounting her experience in such specific terms, she underscores their universality. ζ→ https://www.pastemagazine.com/
Also:
JOE REITAN | September 21, 2017 | Score: ****½
ζ→ https://newnoisemagazine.com/review-shilpa-ray-door-girl/
David Cotner
Girls Are Free.
ζ→ That’s what it says on a makeshift sign on the wall above Shilpa Ray’s head on her latest record, Door Girl. Sometimes in life it helps to take the signs one encounters literally. Girls are free to make mistakes. Girls are free to come and go. Girls are free of all those preconceived notions attached to what it is to be a girl. Gazing with a mixture of serenity and weary imperiousness beneath that sign is Shilpa Ray. Door Girl takes as its titular inspiration her time working the door at Lower East Side bar Pianos, its reputation one of hard~scrabble survival and the inspiration of desperation. Shilpa Ray has seen it all.
ζ→ Girls are free to bear witness.
ζ→ “Shilpa Ray Stars as Door Girl” beckons from the cover of Door Girl in pink neon — reminiscent of nothing less than the pink lipstick that spells out New York Dolls on the cover of their similarly explosive record. The seething frenzy of a feeding frenzy — the hallmark of closing time desperation — whirls around her on the cover, people moving past so quickly that they become a smear of obscurity even as she watches everything by the door. Or is it merely normal life, speeding across her hemisphere in that blasé and banal way that yields few treasures except those that only the most perceptive of all possible artists can dig out? Her song titles are gems that glitter with scorn — “Shilpa Ray’s Got a Heart Full of Dirt,” “You’re Fucking No One,” and “Morning Terrors Nights of Dread,” to name a few — and underscore how extortionately rare good song titles truly are.
ζ→ Girls are freed.
ζ→ Her voice — singular in modern popular music because of its radiant imperfection — takes neither prisoners nor guff as it offers up continuous caustic commentary on the human condition. Hers are observations gleaned from endless nights watching people in their natural habitat. These arenot pretty pictures, shot through as they are with violence in the obvious and menace in the failures. Alternately dreamlike and lifelike, Door Girl carves out its portraits of nightlife with reverberation and feedback, unveiling an expansive level of production quality through which even the perfectly~recorded snare drum is as present and as crisp as the bad breath of the drunk falling asleep at your elbow. Each instrument is so clearly defined in the presentation as to become one of those selfsame dive bar habitués on which Shilpa Ray shines a stark Klieg light of absolute truth. It is the story of a city as it lives and breathes at its most basic levels, as told by an artist who is equal parts musician and magician and for whom each song is a different life she has lived and breathed and experienced like few.
Bandcamp: https://shilparay.bandcamp.com/album/door-girl
Website: http://shilparay.net/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/shilparayisgod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shilpa.ray.9
Label: https://northernspyrecs.com/