Vive l’American Death Ray Music “In The Meantime…” CD/LP
Viva l’American Death Ray Music’s long-awaited fourth album, In The Meantime… is as stylistically restless as the members’ rootless lifestyles. Touring extensively in Europe the last few years, singer/guitarist Nick Ray, drummer Jeff Buock, and bassist Harlan T. Bobo currently reside in New York, Austin, and Memphis respectively. Cutting their teeth in acts as diverse as Polyphonic Spree, Reigning Sound, 68 Combeback, American Death Ray, in the first years of the 21st Century, formulated an artful fusion of glam and soul unparalleled on their recordings for Sympathy Record Industry. Perhaps the best description of that sound comes from Rolling Stone editor David Fricke:
The vocal acid of Lou Reed; Jerry Harrison’s churning garage organ in the early Modern Lovers; Andy Mackay’s sequined, squealing sax in Roxy Music; the crusty fidelity of old Sun 45′s. With fun like that, who needs radios?
In The Meantime… is V.L.A.D.R.M.’s first full-length domestic release since 2003’s A New Commotion A Delicate Tension (And The Exquisite Corpse Of Mr. Jimmy). The evolution since their Sympathy period has found the band gradually de-emphasizing the glam and R&B influences and exploring their latent dub, no wave, post-mod, and post-punk tendencies in greater depth. While the fragments that reference these subgenres are readily identifiable, adding the familiar feel of the subcultural classics you’ve never been able to abandon, as always, Viva l’American Death Ray Music, with the other hand groping in the future, struggles to avoid retro-trappings – retaining a sound and general aesthetic that’s beyond category, distinctly their own, and super-soulful.
By far their most abstract, raw, and skeletal effort to date, In the Meantime… plays with space, repetition, and groove, while retaining a rough punkish edge, danceablity, and a catchy pop-conscious songwriting sensibility. Though you’ll never be able to put your finger on it, try to imagine an obscure intersection of canonical works like Here Come the Warm Jets. Jane from Occupied Europe, Adventure, Unknown Pleasures, and Grotesque (After the Gramme). You can’t? Well maybe should try… This is your subliminal subterranean favorite album of the year… And a creeping addiction…
Most of the tracks were some of the last recordings made at Memphis’ legendary Easley McCain Studios before it’s tragic fire.
