By: Sam Houghton
Rating: 9/11

Shilpa Ray’s voice is wretched, like a steaming mad old hag juiced up on something so grotesque and so awful she could peel the skin right off a grown man’s chest. Strictly off the recordings on A Fish Hook An Open Eye, she sounds like a creature out of an early Ray Bradbury novel, terrifying little children and old folks alike, a voice of a woman from your nightmares who has seen the worst of the worst and is out for some kind of horrifying justice. It’s beautiful. Makes a man uncomfortable.  

A Fish Hook An Open Eye is Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hooker’s debut album. While many critics throw the punk word around quite liberally, in the essence that bands scream a lot and make a lot of riff raff with reverb and gain and action, Shilpa Ray is providing us with a sample of some real from the streets primitivism, punk in it’s purist form. Her lyrics are lewd and in your face (“I just shit and I piss till ya/ put me to bed at night” off “Looking for Mr. Goodbar”), but somehow genuine, like your grandmother would listen a second longer, thinking it interesting, before shutting it off with rage. She spits and growls her lyrics, mostly out of key, like it’s not actually sung, but more snarled, conjuring wild images of werewolves scarfing down raw meat, like she’s trying to sing from the deepest, most wretched part of her stomach. Scientists haven’t yet discovered why music evokes such images.  Or perhaps they have, but either way, I would be afraid if I were alone in a room with Shilpa Ray.

Yet, amongst the darkness, there’s a hint of love in there. And that is where her music passes tolerable and becomes something to whisper to your friends. It’s present in her harpsichord type instrument called the harmonium. In contrast with the slide guitar, it sounds like something that might be featured in an Edgar Allen Poe motion picture: ominous but oozing with sorrow. The lyrics, when not lewd, discuss the horrors of the world, like on “What the Fuck was I Thinking?” Shilpa sings: “I fell in love and forgot about the homeless/ the hunger/ and the women on welfare… what the fuck was I thinking?” But beyond the lyrics and the music, it’s her voice, sounding somewhere between Nico and Patti Smith, that really gets the sorrow glands acting up. Her lyrics can sometimes seem cliché when read off the page: “Well I’m so messed up/ but I got nothing to prove it/ I got no awards or prizes/ for all my acting so desperately,” she sings on “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” but when sung, it’s the fact that she appears to know what’s she’s singing that pulls you in. Like a black man singing the blues, even the most corporate whore-hound can tell genuine from spoiled brat. In Brooklyn, there’s a million little girls who think they can sing, and we take it, we sit there and applaud when they finish because we’re a supportive community. I can appreciate that. But we’re all thinking, “Man, I really hope someone kicks that mike chord out on accident.” Or even worse, we’re all standing frozen in fear, hoping the band doesn’t make any mistakes. Shilpa is genuine, there’s no one way to say it.

My criticism is that the audience she's trying to find might be somewhat small. It takes some gall to listen to her music. Her fans most likely consist of a handful of Bukowski die-hards, angry feminists, people who enjoy dark places, and that rare breed of people who like to get fucked up and really weird. It’s shocking music, not for softhearted, folk loving indie fans, which, with much chagrin from us punk lovers, is what’s hip these days. But there could be a niche for her as the indie crowd and the teeny-bopper crowd inevitably grow weary of soft-heartedness and commercialism. Perhaps similar to how Patti Smith converted a few over at CBGBs when she served up a jolt of primitivism during the dazed disco days, Shilpa will suck in some folk who are growing weary of happiness and longing. The vibrations I’m getting makes me believe Ray doesn’t care who’s listening.

“Woman Sets Boyfriend on Fire” might be the best on the album in terms of having a genuine Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers feel. All the songs have a similar whiskey soaked, dark, rawness, but the album has much diversity, going between fast and punk like, to the more sorrowful ballads. “I’m not Rigid… Yet” is another great one with an Irish punk feel and a booming, walking bass line. All the songs work on this album and the band does its job of supporting the lead and not adding any clutter, but it’s all Shilpa Ray who makes A Fish Hook An Open Eye a unique and memorable experience.