“Morning Terrors Nights of Dread” Shilpa Ray

Shilpa Ray has shared her new video for “Morning Terrors Nights of Dread” from her new LP Door Girl, released this September on Northern Spy Records. Shilpa Ray is currently in the middle of a tour of the UK and Europe before returning to the US for a national tour in November and a just announced December 1st show at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, NY. All Door Girl, which takes its title from Ray’s time working the door at the Lower East Side / New York City bar Pianos, carves out portraits of nightlife, and draws its creative force from New York City’s reputation for hard-scrabble survival. Door Girl is the follow up to Last Year’s Savage.

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.

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 are not 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 self same 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 others have.

Tour Dates:
OCTOBER

17 – Poznan, Poland @ Klub Dragon
18 -Krakow, Poland @ Alchemia
19 – Presov, Slovakia @ Christiania
20 – Trencin, Slovakia @ Luc
21 – Opava, Czech Republic @ Klubova Noc
22 – Olomouc, Czech Republic @ Jazz Club Tibet
23 – Prague, Czech Republic @ Futurum
24 – Plzen, Czech Republic @ Andel
25 – Brno, Czech Republic @ Kabinet MUZ
26 – Zilina, Slovakia @ Sanica
27 – Vsetin, Czech Republic @ DK
28 – Jihlava, Czech Republic @ International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF)

NOVEMBER
01 – Buffalo, NY @ Nietzsche’s
02 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Tavern
03 – Sarnia, Ontario @ cineGAZE
04 – Chicago, IL @ The Hideout
05 – Detroit, MI @ Lager House
06 – Columbus, OH @ Rumba
07 – Cincinnati, OH @ Junkers Tavern
09 – Ithaca, NY @ November Music Series
10 – Jersey City, NJ @ Monty Hall
11 – Washington, DC @ Comet Ping Pong
12 – Richmond, VA @ Strange Matter
13 – Durham, NC @ Pinhook
15 – Atlanta, GA @ Drunken Unicorn
16 – Athens, GA @ Caledonia
17 – Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light
18 – Athens, OH @ The Union
19 – Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie