ray - daylight in the darkroom
new london band with google safe name, have been getting lots of praise from all the right places, according to the quotes on the cd. so when i dropped the cd in the machine, being thrown back to 1985 creation days was rather weird to say the least given the glut of funny haircuts and bands fixated with angular shapes. the music is rich and sumptuous indie guitars with a lot in the way of beauty and harmony. for all the talk of chris isaak, it's the old school days of the prime era house of love that ray seem to be most connected to, especially in the vocal timbre of nev bradford who has the same vocal fullness that guy chadwick used to excel at when the band were on fire. this aural throwback will have certain people recalling such journalistic cliches as 'shimmering guitars', and 'other worldy ambience'.
the best of the bunch comes on early, with the dramatically named, 'godspeed to you the avalanche' where the band let loose for a full 6 minutes with SONIC layers aND DRAMA. PURE PERFECTION. OF COURSE, SUCH HEIGHTS ARE NOT REALLY ACHIEVED AGAIN across the albums 10 tracks, as the emotion seems to be stuck in a one dimensional outlook on life. in other words, it's a slow and mellow (dare i say, depressing) listen throughout, with little in the way of any desire to raise the blood pressure.
so, if you want an album of supreme harmonic richness, and guitars to soundtrack those long nights of the soul, then look out for a complicated band with a simple name.