To debut her new album, the New Jersey-born/Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Shilpa Ray created a parody news site called Savage Times, which streamed her new songs while presenting world events through the lens of a maniacal rockstar. In one story she shows up at Google, "wearing a green dress and ill fitting heels," and throws "a flaming boulder straight into our servers." In another article she starts a Twitter war with Ziggy Stardust. In every photo Ray wears an ape mask that has become her avatar on Last Year’s Savage—the equivalent of Bowie’s alien costume from the 1970s or Bono’s MacPhisto get-up from the '90s. The disguise itself is visually striking, albeit obscure; Savage Times, on the other hand, is a pitch-perfect mix of Dadaist punchlines, pointed cultural satire, meta humor, and good old-fashioned punsmithery.
Ray brings that same sophisticated, intensely derisive sense of humor to the songs on Last Year’s Savage. "Johnny Thunder Fantasy Space Camp" skewers the constant romanticizing of doomed rock stars—male rock stars, although that goes without saying. Over a '50s pop piano line and an insistent snare drum snap, she tells a would-be martyr to go ahead and fall on his sword: "So you think you’ll die a prince in Joshua Tree…/ I won’t stop you, I’ll be rooting for you 'til my cats get the best of me." Ray knows we have too many rock'n'roll casualties already; she’d rather play the crazy cat lady as punk icon. "Nocturnal Emissions" likewise upends male fantasies with similar insight and agitation, as she recounts her own dreams of gender-blurred virility over a tense rhythm section and rumbling guitar riffs: "My dick’s bigger, my breasts are thicker, whatever power means." Ray buys into the same overinflated rock myths she’s puncturing, perhaps because each one represents a way to transcend the limitations of the body and live a bit longer, a bit better. As she cautions on "Nocturnal Emissions", "Don’t ever wake me up, bitch!"
A veteran of the Brooklyn scene who has recorded under various names (Beat the Devil, Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers, just Shilpa Ray) and toured with Nick Cave, Ray delivers these songs in a voice that shapeshifts constantly, hitting every point along the spectrum between howl and coo, between boozy irony and acid rebuke. She does mordant accusations best of all, but there’s always enough gravity in her tone to suggest dark implications to "O My Northern Soul" and even "On Broadway". Most of Her Happy Hookers are back sans billing, emphasizing odd textures rather than melodies or riffs. Andrew Hoepfner sounds like he has an unlimited supply of Santo & Johnny licks, but they’re tucked into the corners of these songs. You wouldn’t miss them if they weren’t there. Ultimately, the defining instrument on Savage, aside from Ray’s commanding voice, is her signature harmonium, which adds a sardonic drone to the songs.
Especially on the album’s second side, Ray’s lyrics are conceptually top heavy, a bit too impressed with their own cleverness. She sings "Sanitary iPad" from the point of view of a high-tech gadget that’s obsolete before it even hits stores. "I’ve got a short shelf life, who’s gonna throw me out?" she sings, merely alluding to a larger point about the disposability of modern culture. She can’t quite make the inhuman sound human—or vice versa, for that matter. Still, at a time when rock'n'roll’s influence is waning, Ray’s defiant humor is a welcome and bracing change of pace. Savage plays like a middle finger flown in the face of long-cherished conventions, or perhaps that monkey-avatar flinging its own poop at not-so-innocent bystanders.
