Gemma Ray Reinvents/ Reimagines Covers

Gifted singer songwriter tackles Gun Club, Lee Hazlewood, the Gershwins, Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Mudhoney and more.

By Blurt Staff

One of BLURT's fave newcomers of the recent past is Britain's Gemma Ray, whose 2009 album Lights Out Zoltar! Earned comparisons as diverse at the Beach Boys and Neko Case - you can read our review here. Ray will be playing the Blurt/Second Motion Records Official SXSW Showcase in Austin on Saturday night, March 20, at the Taproom On Sixth, so if you're at SXSW this year, make sure you don't miss her.

Now comes word that on May 18 she's releasing It's A Shame About Gemma Ray (Bronzerat), an all-covers album that includes unusual selections by composers from George and Ira Gershwin to Lee Hazlewood to The Gun Club. Ray's versions often bear little resemblance to the originals. Instead, they're reinventions of songs, taken from her memory.

Explained Ray in a statement, "I deliberately avoided going back and listening to the original versions. I chose songs that, for better or worse, implanted themselves in my head at different periods in my life."

Comparisons to the Dirty Projectors' Rise Above' and its rethinking of Black Flag, It's A Shame About Gemma Ray,'recorded by Matt Verta-Ray (Heavy Trash) in a spontaneous, whirlwind three day session at his N.Y. Hed studios in New York City, takes on the different and more delicate task of filtering a wide range of styles through Ray's unique sensibilities.

"Rosemary's Baby vs. Drunken Butterfly," for instance, is a haunting one-woman mashup, in which Gemma takes the movie's theme and adds the lyrics from Sonic Youth's "Drunken Butterfly"; "Hey Big Spender" is a tribute to the signature song of Ray's late best friend (a "vivacious, tongue-in-cheek man-eater"), which "was played during her cremation, so it stuck in my head in a very odd way." And "Bei Mir Bistu Shein" is her take on a flirtatious Yiddish song (best known in the U.S. for its interpretation by the Andrews Sisters), which was endorsed by the Nazis in its German interpretation - until they realized it was originally in Yiddish.

Ray didn't original intend to make a covers record. She was actually in NYC to record for a different project with Verta-Ray, but after putting a few of the covers down, the pair determined that a Ray covers album needed to happen. "It was an accident!", says Ray. That's also a reason why Ray tried to recreate songs from her head, because a lot of the cover ideas came about on the spot. It's also why the inspiration behind the songs on the record aren't necessarily the originals, but the one's that made the biggest impression on her.

Trackslisting:

"Ghost on the Highway" - Gun Club

"Bei Mir Bistu Shein" ­ The Andrews Sisters

"Swamp Snake" - The Sensational Alex Harvey Band

"SUD" - Obits

"Only To Other People" - The Cookies

"Lock My Heart" - Jimmy Eaton and Terry Shand

"Rosemary's Baby vs. Drunken Butterfly" - Kryzstof Komeda & Sonic Youth

"Rather Be Your Enemy" - Lee Hazlewood

"Touch Me I'm Sick" ­- Mudhoney

"Just Because" - Lloyd Price

"Looking the World Over" - Memphis Minnie

"Everyday (Rollercoaster)" - Buddy Holly (Hardin/Petty)

"I'd Rather Go Blind" - Ellington Jordan, & lyrics by Etta James but credited to her partner Billy Foster (for tax reasons).

"Crush on You" - George and Ira Gershwin

"Bolt on the Door" - Gallon Drunk

"Hey Big Spender" - Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields

[Photo Credit: Simon Webb]