Rays

You Can Get There From Here Black Vinyl Edition

Oakland band Rays return with their second album, You Can Get There From Here,
their first release since their eponymous Trouble In Mind debut in 2016. You Can Get
There From Here represents a turning point for the band, angling their scrappy, postpunk
fury into a more refined & melodic pop sensibility, drawing inspiration from UK
DIY pop & punk like Dolly Mixture, Cleaners From Venus & Television Personalities.
Songs like "Fallen Stars" & "The Garden" temper their sonic crunch ever so slightly,
relying more on the harmonic wallop of a solid hook than the sheer volume of guitars.
This is urgent, chiming guitar pop that clangs with a sonorous melancholy & a ramshackle
grace. Rays can still lay it down with the rest of 'em; tunes like "Subway" & "Work of
Art" shuffle & stumble forward, skirting chaos in a flurry of strums, recalling antipodean
groups like UV Race or Dick Diver who cull inspiration from idiosyncratic UK greats like
Mark E. Smith or Robyn Hitchcock. The new album finds the core group of Stanley
Martinez, Eva Hannan, Troy Hewitt & Alexa Pantalone augmented by new member &
keyboardist Britta Leijonflycht, whose synth flourishes add melodic embellishments, sonic
heft or psychedelic swirl where needed.