Voodoo Rays

Voodoo Rays, a trio of musicians from London, describe their sound as “dark psychedelia” and the band’s second album, Crabwise, serves as solid proof that this genre does actually exist!

“Having finished their second album, Crabwise, the band are continuing to gig around London regularly, building up a fearsome reputation by word of mouth alone.”

Crabwise is a seemingly established rock record, dip-dyed with obvious influence from bands like Sonic Youth and The Pixies and driven by wavering riffs coupled with mellow, crooning vocals and plodding bass lines.

Lyrically the album is fairly melancholy, mirroring the classic rock theme with a psychedelic twist that surrounds the rest of the record. It’s easy to imagine these songs sliding out of the speakers between support bands in a smoky venue at the heart of a large city, owing to their tendancy to border on the grunge genre whilst maintaing their experimental and ultimately developmental nature.

The opening track, Faithless, starts on a high as images of leather boots tapping on a steel floor spring to mind while track 3, Elegant Slumming, brings the pace right down with whining guitar that appears almost personified to match eloquently despondent vocals.

For the first few seconds of track number 4, Here & Now, it sounds almost as though an indie atricle is being attempted. However, Voodoo Rays’ signature irregular and detatched sound soon creeps back in, reminding fans just who they’re listening to, and track 6, Soul, with its reverb drenched guitar and broken and expressive lyrics, is comparable to Sonic Youth should they be subject to a series of muscle relaxants due to its its fluctuating instrumental breaks in conjunction with sparse vocals.

The last song, Against Your Lover’s Door, comes in the from of a surprisingly empowering close to the album. Rhythmic and constant plucking is complimented by rich, echoing bass and the indtroduction of a wind section to add that special bit of subltle diversity towards the middle of the song. It is the drum that drives this final musical gesture, supported at the end by a wonderful offering in the form of sweeping guitar and a comeback from the wind instruments as the music builds to a crecendo and dies down to end the slue of suggestive, coherent, mellow, and melodic tracks that come together to make up Crabwise.

Katie.

- Tranquilizer radio