Playlist culture suggests that we take our music with a side of multitasking—or perhaps, the other way around. Spotify, for instance, perpetuates this idea with its “Genres & Moods” section, featuring efficiently labeled playlists for a range of daily activities: “Workout,” “Sleep,” “Dinner.” Listening to am i happy, singing_, Sam Ray’s latest release under his electronic alias Ricky Eat Acid, it’s reassuring to discover that none of its songs come remotely close to any of those categories.
Originally written and recorded as a rough draft in 2014, am i happy was laid down in just three days. Ray has said he considered releasing the album immediately, but was advised to spend more time with it, later devoting months to retouching and re-tooling the work in a manner he likens to “reshaping a lump of clay, or chipping away at a hunk o’ marble to make a better statue.” In the four years since that initial recording, the Maryland composer/producer has developed a reputation as an eclectic, oddball bedroom-pop auteur as fans have discovered Ricky Eat Acid releases like 2014’s Three Love Songs and 2016’s Talk to You Soon, as well as full-lengths from his low-fi folk project Julia Brown and his indie rock band American Pleasure Club (FKA Teen Suicide).
am i happy marks a sharp detour from the sample-heavy approach that has united much of Ray’s previous work. Three Love Songs memorably repurposed a cover of a Drake and Rihanna duet, a fire and brimstone radio sermon, and countless collaged vocals; American Pleasure Club’s recent A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This flips Frank Ocean’s version of “At Your Best (You Are Love).” Every note of am i happy, however, is original—the only samples present are those borrowing from Ray’s own compositions. Like an audio magpie, he has been amassing these sound scraps for years, hoarding excerpts from string quartets and cataloging every plink of piano. With a slow and steady hand, Ray stitched these varied elements together. The result is a collection of arresting sonics that resist passive listening, instead commanding undivided attention.
Opening track “‘sitting in a diner’” is one of the most difficult pieces Ray has released to date, but in this case “difficult” and “beautiful” are not mutually exclusive terms. The song doesn’t so much begin as erupt, bursting like a glitter cannon loaded with shards of broken mirror. An early listen caused me to wonder if my speakers were shorting out, but the patchwork of noise is fragmented by design. It is a gorgeous assault on the eardrums, intercutting complete silence with 808 chirps that sound like Mario leaping through a row of coins.
His use of homegrown samples throughout am i happy, and the months he spent finessing the record, illustrate heightened discipline for someone who’d already churned out dozens of Bandcamp albums by the time he recorded it. That discipline pays off: am i happy is among Ray’s most cohesive recordings, playing like a linear triptych rather than a scrapbook. Thematically, too, it represents a development. Works like Three Love Songs and Talk to You Soon conveyed a narrative sense of place, memory, and motion. Cuts like “Driving alone past roadwork at night” and “Spinning About Under the Bright Light in Bliss” evoked filmic tableaus filtered through the grainy glow of nostalgia—one could easily imagine taking a midnight road trip, or making out in a drunken stupor.
am i happy, on the other hand, requires absolute stillness. It’s too jarring to score mundane activities, and too interesting to be relegated to playlists like “Hanging Out and Relaxing” or “Wine & Dine.” “two_beautiful ways of moving_your_hands” may be fabricated with gorgeous strings, but their incomplete, looped phrases arouse an intense yearning for them to fully bloom. It is a sensation I can only liken to the blushing tension between a “good night” and a first kiss. The anticipation escalates when the audio cuts out for a full four seconds, an eternity in song time. As a listener, you are hanging on every note, or lack thereof.
The album’s final, 17-minute movement, “am i happy, singing_,” is some of the lushest music Ray has ever made. Harmonica-like wails stretch across lambent synths, and static surges under minimalist piano like a hissing river. A halo of birdsong drifts around the perimeter. It is the record’s most musical and naturalistic offering, and feels particularly well-earned given the prior turbulence. By the time we reach its closing minutes, am i happy, singing_ has migrated miles from its initial commotion. Even in stillness, we are still moving.
