New Music Tuesday: Shilpa Ray and the case of the spooky summer

It’s true when people say that there’s a time and a place for everything. The statement would make even more sense if you swapped out the words “time” and “place” with “music.” There’s a music and a music for everything.

There are all different kinds of sounds and songs and structures and toots and beeps to choose from. Some are fantastic. Most are bad. But like that other phrase people say all the time about pizza and how pizza is like sex because even when it’s bad it’s pretty good. Music is like that. Music fills a quiet void with a noise. Or grease and oil and meat. Whatever you need filled with.

You can pick and choose what kind of noise you’d like to fill your holes. There are lots of variations but to narrow it down to the most basic of descriptions, the two primary teams are LIGHT, and DARK. I don’t know about you, but nine times out of ten, I’ll pick team dark every damn time.Conveniently, that’s the team Shilpa Ray is on and her latest album, Last Year’s Savage, looks to be upping her chances of landing the title of “Team Dark Captain.” Have a listen to “Pop Song for Euthanasia” off the new release and then mentally enter your vote.

The luxury of sound is that it can fill any space, big or large. Like a steam, or a fog, or a ghost. The sound of Shilpa Ray is like something you’d imagine playing from the sound system of a haunted pirate ship slapping its way across the ocean, guided by only the light of a spooky summer moon.

In keeping with this mood we’re in here, we asked Shilpa Ray to describe the last time she really wanted to have a ghost experience, but didn’t, and here’s her 100% perfect answer:

“I’m actually waiting for the time I don’t have a ghost experience. These ghosts never fail to appear and crowd my life, whether it’s at my grandma’s house in Calcutta or burned down buildings in Athens, OH. People who want ghost experiences are ones that have never actually experienced a ghost. Ghosts are what I like to call punishers. They are high maintenance and incredibly vain. I’ve even had one sit on my chest in the middle of the night and drone on and on about its anxieties and girl ghost problems. Take a Zoloft dude! I need to go to work. How presumptuous for one to think I’d even care about some soap opera life lived centuries ago? Not to mention the constant bitching about electricity. That’s why they play with the light switches and fuck with your high speed internet connection. They think that they’re so damn cute. No, Casper you are not. I’ll be throwing a party for the time when they leave me alone, and hope they pay some shrink to listen to their babbling about supernatural problems.”

*Sigh* Team Dark/Shilpa 4-ever.

Shilpa Ray is on the road this summer supporting the new album, which came out on May 19 via Northern Spy Records. Check out her show dates HERE.

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