I'm not sure why this didn't get a post when it came out. I certainly remember listening to it, and frankly, ANY Fred Thomas project is likely to get a post on the weight of that fact alone.
Idle Ray (Michigan) definitely sounds like Fred Thomas. It's not the 60s/fuzzy/pop of Saturday Looks Good To Me or Mighty Clouds. But it's much more traditionally pop than some of his solo efforts (Fred Thomas, City Center) - in fact, one Bandcamp user said, "Like a classic FT record ran through a Guided By Voices filter".
The band put up a third pressing of the LP (released via Life Like, which is Fred Thomas' label). Originally released in 2021, the Bandcamp page states that this is probably the last pressing of the LP.
Me & Ennui Are Friends, Baby by Sarah Mary Chadwick
Okay listen, I love Sarah Mary Chadwick. And I love Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby just as much as I love everything else she’s released. It’s easily my favorite record of the year… now. But I sure as hell wasn’t ready for this album when it came out back in January. I was avoiding eye contact with the thing from across the room, not because its cover makes me blush (though it does) but because, well, I’m sure you remember what the vibe was like back then. I mean, were you ready for a close mic’ed and merciless set of self-dissecting piano and voice numbers peppered with suicide humor? Talk about dancing while the boat goes down! Okay, so things aren’t feeling all that different right now, a year on. But come on, there was a good stretch there when it was… a little better. That’s when I felt ready to invite this one in. Because that’s what eventually happens with every SMC album: it becomes a constant companion, a new chapter added to the depress-o songbook of hers that plays at random in my head. And I’m happy to report that its songs have since shuffled themselves thoroughly amongst the others that play on my dark, metaphorical jukebox. Now they’re doing what all the rest of her songs do: comforting me, reassuring me, keeping me going. Much more important than any of that, though, is knowing that Sarah herself has kept going, since, as she reminds us on this album, she came far too close to never glimpsing 2021.
That album aside, I hope you’re cool with good old alphabetical order. It’s too difficult for me to narrow things down any further. The way I look at it is, the record was either one of my favorites — meaning months and weeks later I still can’t get enough of it — or it wasn’t. Plus, it’s really just the beginning of the relationship. From here, these records are going to hit me in new and different ways, and my connection to them will change, through the combination of the music itself and whatever the world throws my way — because that’s what favorite records do. So here are ten new ones and seven new old ones (if we covered them, I linked to them).
David Boulter — Lover’s Walk (The Spoken Word)
Sarah Mary Chadwick — Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby (Ba Da Bing!)
Dag — Pedestrian Life (Bedroom Suck)
Dom & The Wizards — The Australian Cyclone Intensity Scale (Tenth Court)
Idle Ray — s/t (Life Like)
Quivers — Golden Doubt (Ba Da Bing!)
The Reds, Pinks & Purples — Uncommon Weather (Slumberland)
Esther Rose — How Many Times (Father/Daughter)
The Tubs — Names EP (Trouble In Mind)
Tam Vantage — Laughing Gas & Apple Pie (Still Traveller)
Archival/Reissue
The Apartments — A Life Full of Farewells (Talitres)
Virginia Astley — From Gardens Where We Feel Secure (Self-released)
David Chesworth & Bill McDonald — Drive Time (Chapter)
Kathleen Edwards — Failer (Last Gang/Quitters)
Magic Roundabout — Up (Third Man)
Neil Richards — Ancient Loyalties (Hobbies Galore)
Linda Smith — Till Another Time (Captured Tracks)
And I’ll leave you with a seasonally appropriate, if not an upbeat number (not that you were expecting one, of course) from an all-time favorite. Mark Eitzel can use all the good psychic vibes he can get right now – like the kind that comes from his music reaching the ears of new fans – after suffering a second heart attack earlier this year. Keep feeling better, Mark!
It was less than 6 months ago that Michigan's Idle Ray received their first post here. Idle Ray is one of the many projects featuring Fred Thomas (Saturday Looks Good To Me, Mighty Clouds).
This 7" features some leftovers from the recording session that produced their most recent LP, "Even in the Spring". I'm not sure who wrote the liner notes for this 7", but Dinosaur Jr and Pavement (specifically Slanted and Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain era) are mentioned as touchstones.
While each song is great, "Airport" is the winner here. This is released by Salinas Records and is still available at their website.
Una simple recomendación de Glenn Donaldson, el de The Reds, Pinks, and Purples, me ha bastado para ponerme a tope con el segundo trabajo de Idle Ray. Porque, si haces esos discos tan buenos, es imposible que tengas mal gusto. Y efectivamente, este trío de Michigan sabe muy bien lo que se hace. Además, me ha sorprendido lo ecléctico de su propuesta, ya que van mucho más allá del indie-pop. Quizá,…
Between 2015 and 2018, Fred Thomas released three albums worth of “wildly personal poem-songs about death and upheaval,” as he put it to Aquarium Drunkard, that cracked open a new musical continuum. On All Are Saved, Changer and Aftering, Thomas synthesized the many styles he wears within the indie universe into a coat of so many colors that it seemed limitless. But, surprisingly, after completing the trilogy he felt like he’d said all he could possibly say in the style, and just like that, hung it up. Thomas fans can rejoice over his full-length debut as Idle Ray, though, which slipped out into the world on a Bandcamp Friday in May, and like a punchy sibling of sorts, is still in the direct bloodline of his recent solo work.
Idle Ray is Thomas’ conscious return, after more than 20 years in the game, to how he started: recording guitar-based pop songs on his 4-track. And he’s taking the opportunity while traveling through the past to explore it from new angles. On “Polaroid,” Thomas looks through the viewfinder and sees an old way of living in sharp, self-aware focus, his voice bouncing atop a handclap-enhanced beat that recalls his old band, Saturday Looks Good To Me. He emerges alone with his guitar from behind the bristly cloud of fuzz that’s been building to let a little light in with the refrain, cleanly capping the song at both ends. “I used to have a Polaroid camera/I took it with me everywhere/I used to take pictures of people/so they’d remember I was there.” The narrator is a foil to the one in “House Show, Late December,” Aftering’s muted centerpiece, who carried a disposable for a different reason: searching for meaning in everything — “a vacant storefront, telephone wires, a cloud” — everything, that is, except people.
There’s a renewed sense of joy to the performance on Idle Ray which is partly the result of Thomas pivoting on the fly. After a couple of years working out the material, he entered, as he put it in the same interview, “a really nice studio” only to emerge with “a mediocre indie rock record” that had sucked the life out of his hook-heavy songs. Thankfully, after scrapping the sessions and plugging in at home, Thomas was able to capture the material’s intended energy. “Dreamed You Were A Dog'' is evidence of this, and, like most songs on Idle Ray, begins by introducing a vaguely menacing scenario: “Twenty times a day the room begins collapsing/Your surroundings slip away.” When the drums hit they pack such a bright punch that they leave a mark, like taking a pair of double-taps from a paintball gun. Thankfully, the track offers an antidote to the unpleasant situation, and a continuation of an idea Thomas first envisioned on All Are Saved, of exchanging places with man’s best friend: “You dreamed you were a dog/You dreamed you had some friends who sometimes asked you what was wrong.” “Dreamed” steadies itself with power-pop poise when the change comes, but a guitar lead that sounds like a gamma ray tuned to Thin Lizzy arrives suddenly, like an unexpected form of punctuation, and sees the song to the door before it reaches the two-minute mark.
Even Idle Ray’s quieter songs have a loud way about them, with the acoustic guitar and vocals pushed viscerally to the front a la Bee Thousand, although not quite as frayed. The comparison might be more apt in terms of their brevity, and how abruptly they come to an end, giving way to the next song. The best (and shortest) of the bunch is “Water Comes In Through The Windows,” where Thomas’ singing fluctuates between hushed and cathartic, like Arthur Russell, and his wife, Emily Roll’s (Haunted, XV) backing vocals have this cool, whispery way of lingering in the air for longer than you expect. But their spell is quickly broken by the arrival of the insistent snare that begins “Coat of Many Colors” and the tightly-harnessed fuzz guitar that pulls the song forward towards the verse. And this might be what most distinguishes Thomas’ recent trilogy from this album: If those records are colorful, Idle Ray is textural, and a place where Thomas’ poetic lyrics share the spotlight with the instrumental and vocal hooks.
Fred Thomas can simply do no wrong. We should all know this by now, right? From solo albums to Saturday Looks Good To Me to Failed Flowers to great projects you even forgot he was in. Lovesick? Flashpapr? City Center? Well, Idle Ray just continues Thomas’ musical winning streak. Recorded in March & April of 2020 on cassette four track and released May 1st, Idle Ray just oozes with spontaneity and sincerity. The demo consists of five ramshackled lo-fi indie punk pop nuggets that bounce joyously off the walls and beg for repeated listens. Idle Ray jubilantly reminds you why you fell in love with rock music to begin with.
