Gemma Ray 'Lights Out Zoltar' album

Gemma Ray conjures a dark and sensuous world on her US debut, 'Lights Out, Zoltar!' (October 27, Bronzerat Records). Already something of a darling of the foreign press (see above), Ray is set to bring her richly emotional, '50s-inspired music to America this fall. Her fans already include Jimmy Page and Nick Cave' and The Bad Seeds. Anyone with a similar love of expansive emotions, sweeping orchestration, richly reverberating sounds, and a little bit of unease should get very excited.

Musically, Ray's songs recall early rock and roll through the lens of a late-night horror film. Take the album's opener, "100 MPH (In Second Gear)"; it's a riot of hollow body guitars (played with a kitchen knife), rolling cymbals, toy pianos, and ghostly female voices. While several of the songs of the album follow this template ("1952", "Goody Hoo", and a few more), there are other sides to Ray. "Tough Love" is a finger snapping track about, well, being tough in relationships; "You were a white dove/I wore a boxing glove," she sings, as a music-box style xylophones strike in the background.

The songs on 'Lights Out, Zoltar!', written by Ray (who also produced most every sound therein) , deal with life on the emotional margins. Its characters are stuck in endless metaphorical deserts ("No Water"); they lose their souls to dark forces ("Death Roll"); they're too sick to go out ("So Do I"); they lurk in the shadows, drown, yearn, sneak, and careen out of control.

"I try to whip up my human condition into a three-minute tornado," Ray told UK newspaper The Sun last year. "so it's definitely emotional, hopefully emotive. The vibe of it is futuristic vs. Fifties and Sixties' mini-melodramas."

“With noir-ish hints of Lee Hazlewood’s unearthly country-rock, Ray sits midway between Nina Simone and Isobel Campbell, and is the better for it.” – MOJO

"Brilliantly brooding" – NME

"Imagine Norah Jones on Amy Winehouse's drugs" – Q

Gemma Ray Sharp Essex Melodramatist Looks Back To Look Forward
"The Harmony Rocket," Gemma Ray sighs, clearly in love, "is a life-changing guitar. It's got the most amazing pick-ups." This very instrument was recently cradled, plucked and shaken by her before being dropped against its amp in a feedback finale at a MOJO-sponsored show at London's Union Chapel church. "It just sounds so great when you beat the fuck out of it," she beams. "But I know I can't because I know I've got other gigs to do. I have to be restrained." On wondrous new album Lights Out Zoltar!, Ray shows restraint by "squeezing all my ideas into a three minute pop song. Being honest, a 10-minute indulgent wig-out is my default position." The ideas include '50s pop, country blues, '60s girl-group dramarama and Latin/lounge exotica, all with a steely modern resolve, making Essex-raised Ray a true alternative to the wan psych-folk of today's lady-pop troupe. A stroll in the National Gallery reveals her as a sharp dresser and sharper thinker with mild OCD tendencies ("If I don't look at that painting once more, I'm disrespecting the painter"). Gemma Smith, as she was bon, recalls her childhood fascination with dinosaurs and making robots out of magnets, "But then songs become a vehicle for your obsessions." Alienated in Essex, she found allies who turned demountables from haulage vehicles into a rehearsal space, wired up to a car mechanic's workshop for power. "We practically lived in those rooms," she recalls. "That's where I discovered music, drugs (laughs), and learnt how to play guitar backwards. It was all quite Sonic Youth and experimental." She had a rocking, P.J. Harvey-band phase as Gemma Ray Ritual, selling hand-made CDs at gigs, before admitting she was solo by nature, and "vintage" was her true voice. "I love the restraint of '50s music. Even when it broke into rock'n'roll, it's still concise pop songs," she declares. "Different eras appeal to me, but when it gets to 1975, nothing much appeal to me in terms of style and sound." Lights Out Zoltar!, which followed 2008's official debut The Leader, is named after the fortune teller in Victorian arcade machines. This is her "comic book villain statement against superstition. I feel superstitious but science wins on this album." As it did in her own life when, in 2005, she fell ill with chronic fatigue syndrome. "I was only able to record Zoltar! With the help of hypnosis tapes," she explains, "which became a scientific aid to my brain, and gave me lots more energy when I needed it. I'd say I'm 80 per cent better now. I had to find a way round it - I wasn't going to spend my whole life in my pyjamas."

credits: Martin Aston

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Gemma Ray - Lights Out Zoltar