New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Shilpa Ray And Her Happy Hookers Official Website) - Sometimes you see an artist that just hits you smack dab in the middle of your heart. Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers are an incredible blend of grinding blues, sleazy jazz, and disturbing rock tied together with pop and punk sensibilities; the result sounding something like a vulgar Ella Fitzgerald, channeling Nick Cave and PJ
Harvey crooning in front of a wall of distortion and thunderous, pounding rhythms.
The band reads like a who's who of recent NYC rock luminaries including members of Creaky Boards, Soft Black, Kapow!, and cult rock producers The Negatones. Their live shows are already a notorious commodity which regularly feature audiences that scream as loud as the band does through their instruments and voices.
Their debut album, 'A Fish Hook An Open Eye' captures the band's raw and unique sound in 8 solid tracks, demonstrating depth, ability, and emotional scope, eclipsing anything from Shilpa's already lauded past. But Shilpa is not looking back: 'A Fish Hook An Open Eye' is released and then Shilpa and her band will viciously tour throughout 2009, including opening for Boss Hogg on September 10, 2009 at the new Knitting Factory Brooklyn.
Shilpa talks about the making of her album:
This album was recorded and mixed in 8 days. We recorded it in August of last year at Melody Lanes Studios. The whole point was to break the curse of never being able to finish anything. I have been pretty unsuccessful with finishing things all my life. I had just left the first band I founded, Beat the Devil, and was starting all over again, a continuous pattern for me, like Sisyphus and his rock. This record is haphazard, full of flaws and changes genre every song, but it's also honest, raw, and urgent. In some twisted way it describes a break up, and how pointless it is to predict how your life is going to turn out, so I guess it's also about recovery after failure. - Shilpa Ray
Beating St Louis
This one's about the three way drunken fist fight I got into with my former band mates when we were touring the country.
I Only Have Eyes For You� is a cover.
I wanted to play this song like I'm forced to look at a person with love and the great deal of hate I felt for myself for being in love.
Filthy and Free
I wrote this to escape someone else's sense of control. I wanted to be free of the rules, expectations and criticisms people put on you to keep you down and unhappy.
The Coward Cracked the Dawn
Hmmm�I originally wrote this song to be performed as a duet. It came about after a night of binge drinking and doing a bar of Xanax. Excessive drug use is lonely unless you write a glorified pompous story about it. No one gives a shit about you. They only care about what you can provide for them. There are so many fake C grade Hunter S Thompson's in this world. It's pathetic. Write yourself a drug novel boys, and you'll get an unlimited amount of pussy. Be an actual drug addict, and you'll never get a platform, just the intense pain of fucking up your anonymous aging body.
I'm not Frigid..Yet
I had just broken up with a boyfriend who was too embarrassed to call me his girlfriend. As a source of comfort my friends kept encouraging me to screw everyone in town. I couldn't do it, but I could sit on the sidelines like the old dudes on the Muppets and make fun of it. Have you ever met the crap that's out there? And the lame rituals you have to do to get that kind of crap to go to bed with you? Sheesh!
What the F%^%&^ I Thinking?
Well, that just about says it all. I do love a good waltz.
Woman Sets Boyfriend On Fire
This was the title on a CNN article, where a woman lights her boyfriends dick on fire, after she finds out he cheated on her. WOW!
Looking For Mr Goodbar
This was fun. We recorded this with a room mic and ended up using the first take.
'This tenuous command of a raucous sound makes for a volatile breed of rock and roll.' - The New Yorker
'Half the fun in seeing this volatile NYC jazz-folk-blues-punk outfit lies in watching the unfamiliar react the first time lead singer Shilpa Ray opens her mouth. Typical reaction: shock and awe. ' - The Village Voice
