‘Fuck it! You want a strong hook? I’ll give you a fucking strong hook!’

By Jonathan, SHILPA RAY could be Patti Smith and Iggy Pop love child with Allen Ginsberg as the midwife. Maybe, I do not know, but her new album DOOR GIRL released now, and it is among the best ones this year. She is coming from New York, living in a love and hate relationship with the city where she works as a door girl at Pianos bar. And this door girl tells stories about the city and its people who are living in a big sweet rotting apple like worms.

She has started to write this album after she was rejected by record labels and booking agents because ‘she doesn’t write strong enough hooks.’ ‘Fuck it! You want a strong hook? I’ll give you a fucking strong hook!’ And then she wrote the first song for the album in about an hour or so, really angry.

Musically this record is all digging into what she felt was indigenous from New York City, so a lot of the influences came from doo-wop, punk, noise, hip-hop and no-wave.

This song ‘EMT Police and the Fire Department’ is about a hot summer night at the Pianos when somebody called the ambulance, the cops, and the fire-brigade, and they arrived at the same time

‘It was like one of those nights in the summer when you know there’s a lot of trouble about to happen, because it gets swampy and hot and everybody goes crazy… I’ve definitely seen people fighting in the front. It breaks out in this massive wave: it gradually happens and then somebody calls out some kind of a sexist or racial slur, because they always just go to that… Then the whole place just goes crazy. I’ve definitely seen somebody break a bottle over a guy’s head before over something really stupid.’

DOOR GIRL ON TOUR in October in UK, France, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic, in November in the US. So if you want a strong hook, she will give you a fucking strong hook.

UK DATES: 3 > Brighton – Green Door Store, 4 > London – The Social, 5 > Glasgow – 13th Note Cafe, 7 > Gateshead – The Central Bar, 8 > Hull – Adelphi Club

If you want to know more about her songs, she talks about here