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Door Girl

by Shilpa Ray

supported by
Bryan Lovett
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Bryan Lovett I've had like 6 different favorite tracks on this record. Each song paints such an impactful picture of modern existence and wading through the scummy swamps of city romance. This album makes me wish I was a New Yorker. Favorite track: Manhattanoid Creepazoids.
arthurjnewberry
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arthurjnewberry I was always a fan of Arcade Fire's Neon Bible for its huge sound and fearless themes, but we don't live in 2007 anymore. This album is my new mantra. Favorite track: You're Fucking No One.
rainer eric
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rainer eric Shilpa Ray can roar like a lion and also has the power of one. But she also masters vocal subtleties easily and has as many musical ideas as there are bees in a bee hive :-). Wonderful lyrics.Track 7 is great for dancing. Favorite track: EMT Police and the Fire Department.
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Morning terrors and my nights of dread Morning terror nights of dread I saw my soul stapled to my bed She saw her soul stapled to her bed It’s weighing down on me It‘s weighing down on me Lock my head between my knees I can’t breathe Pacing round the ashes on my floor Sometimes I wish I could fly out of my window Weighing down me It’s weighing down on me Cold sweats through my arteries I can’t breathe *** No one gets it easy She wants it easy No one gets it easy She wants it easy I need a 60ft yacht, Some trust fund kids The promise of a woman in white bikini Prescription Drugs Prescription Love And the miracle to clean up all my dirty martinis I want it easy She wants it easy I want it easy She wants it easy I wanna fit in the picture of someone else’s dream **** Morning terrors and the nights of dread Morning terrors her nights of dread I get the kind of sun made out of lead She gets the kind sun made out of lead It’s weighing down on me It’s weighing down on me O Electro Shock Therapy (Call and Response) Morning terrors my nights of dread Morning terrors nights of dread Morning terrors my nights of dread Morning terrors nights of dread Morning terrors my nights of dread Morning terrors nights of dread Morning terrors my nights of dread Morning terrors nights of dread
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I’m gonna tell you a story about a hot summer night At a bar in the Lower East Side The air was so thick you could cut it with a knife The sweating crowds so thick it could make you want to cut them with a knife The rats and the roaches Crawling out in drove straight out of the sewage pipes And sanitation may have been on strike It was the night when someone called the EMT the Police and the Fire Dept. EMT POLICE THE FIRE DEPARTMENT EMT POLICE THE FIRE DEPARTMENT EMT POLICE THE FIRE DEPARTMENT It was the night you got your stomach pumped Vodka Bullshit Long Island Ice Tea When you yuppies become Drunk Ass Punks Post hedge funds post surgeries The time you said I’d better lawyer up Vomiting while you threaten to sue me All Hail The Golden Calf when LES puts the blame on the STATE OF NEW JERSEY EMT POLICE THE FIRE DEPARTMENT Wa-oh Wa-oh Wa-oh Wa-oh Wa-oh Wa-oh Wa-oh And I’m charging 8 bucks To go to hell It’s straight up the stairs. I’m charging 8 bucks To go to hell. It’s straight up the stairs. To got to hell Racist Barbie’s wasted, sippin’ from straws Holler holler’s ‘bout the back door fees Ken’s slippin' 50’s, he’s got privilege son To melt like wax in debauchery I watch the zombies hump the tetanus floors In protest of going home with nobody Fights break cracking bottles on skulls I watch like the Moses of a loser’s ANARCHY EMT POLICE THE FIRE DEPARTMENT Wa-oh Wa-oh Wa-oh Wa-oh Wa-oh Wa-oh Wa-oh These are not the best minds of my generation Destroyed by madness Hysterical naked These are not the best minds of my generation Destroyed by madness Hysterical naked These are not the best minds.
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After Hours 04:35
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I saw it coming miles away Under the bleachers as a teenager Old Age And the endless failures A chip on both shoulders A heart full of dirt For all the people bouncing through life So pure and positively Ever wonder what happens To people like me? Here comes the point of no return Yeah who in their right mind walks around backwards? Point of no return Yeah who in their right mind walk around backwards? Tiny Chinese ladies Rollin’ Collecting cans from the garbage cans Giggle at my grand delusions Entitlements Why should they understand? I’m a walking parody For the many ways I’ve callously Escaped the hands that could crush me Here comes the point of no return Yeah who in their right mind walks around backwards? Point of no return Yeah who in their right mind walk around backwards? (Spoken) Why walk when the people have shat all over life’s lonely highway? (Sung) I guess I’m the just jester that molests through it my way No one needs to know why I wake up and where I go No one needs to know where I’ve gotta be Here’s comes the point of no return Yeah who in their right mind walks around backwards? Point of no return Yeah who in their right mind walks around backwards? (repeat)
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about

Girls Are Free.

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.

Girls are free to bear witness.

“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.

Girls are freed.

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 others have.

- David Cotner

credits

released September 22, 2017

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Shilpa Ray Brooklyn, New York

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.

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