In the pantheon of body parts romanticized in song, the heart is clearly the favorite (See: All Pop Songs), while the lung is as overlooked and misunderstood as a gangly feminist at a beauty pageant. But in Lung of Love, Amy Ray's sixth solo album in a decade, the punk-folk icon gives the humble apparatus its due.
OFFICIAL :: MYSPACE :: FACEBOOK :: TWITTER :: DAEMON
In the mid 1970s, Amy Ray was a Georgia 'tween, plucking out Partridge Family songs on her guitar and dreaming of becoming David Cassidy, the ardent teen idol who got all the girls. A poetic tomboy with big green eyes, Ray began writing songs about injustice and the tragedy of unrequited love, and playing her music in the schoolyard. By age 15, Ray was making music as "Saliers and Ray" with her school friend, Emily. After a chance glance through the dictionary to find a word they liked, Saliers and Ray were reborn as the Indigo Girls - a Grammy award-winning, multiplatinum-selling, social justice-promoting beloved folk-rock duo with dozens of recordings and thousands of tour dates under their belts.
At 36, Ray released Stag in 2000, her first solo album. Although she'd been writing folk, then rock, music for a majority of her life, Ray sensed that neither was the ideal form for what she was trying to express. "It's not like I felt short changed or blocked by the Indigo Girls," says Ray. "But there was something I was trying to express that didn't fit into that format." Stag, she says, "was a desperate attempt to get these songs out of my system." The record was eclectic, recorded piecemeal all around the country. The effect was raw, urgent, and exciting. Prom, in 2005, was more "thematic and focused." Ray created a band of "punk royalty"- Donna Dresch and Jody Bleyle from Team Dresch, Kate Schellenbach from Luscious Jackson - and played with the same musicians throughout the record. Prom evoked the epic feelings of the high school era, whether it was coming out in a small town ("Rural Faggot") or the sureness of a pro-life zealot in the anthemic "Let It Ring." She was touring so much as a solo artist that she released Live from Knoxville in 2006.
By Didn't It Feel Kinder in 2008, Ray worked with her first producer since launching her solo career - Greg Griffith, who had produced Le Tigre, The Butchies, and Vitapup. "At first I found his strong ideas challenging to work with - it felt like he didn't value the experience I already had in the studio," says Ray. "Later, I realized what a gift it is that he doesn't defer to me." The partnership rendered her third solo album the most musically mature and heartbreaking. Greg Griffith is back in Lung of Love - and this time as a co-writer, the first time Ray has collaborated as a songwriter. Each song is a perfectly imperfect confection presented in her tender, scratchy voice. Backed by Griffith (Bass and Guitars), Julie Wolf (Keys), and former Butchies Melissa York (Drums) and Kaia Wilson (Guitars and Vocals), the songs have an urgent, bright economy. Guest vocalists pop up throughout the record, including Brandi Carlile, Jim James, and Lindsay Fuller. Although the songs are threaded together by an economy and craft of writing, they cover a diverse musical geography, from Appalachia to Punk Rock.
"The lung of love is my singing voice," says Ray. "That is what comes out of me; but always in a struggle with its own clumsiness and frailty." The lung: delicate, vulnerable, with frond-like bronchi reaching out. It is quietly, secretly, our connection to one another. Our breath supports our voices-expressing song, outrage, passion, hilarity-and each individuals breath goes from being held in their lungs, to being released into the world, where we each yell to be heard, gasp for air, squeal in joy, and sing. It is, literally, inspiration. Ray is also interested in our airways, writ large. "In a larger way, what is the lung of love in the world?" asks Ray. "How do we listen to all that expression and take it in?" As a beloved Indigo Girl, Ray has long been known for her big muscular heart, as a solo artist though; she has indisputably found her voice.
