Shilpa Ray has one of those voices that is simultaneously haunting and beautiful, like Nick Cave (whose label she is signed to) or Tom Waits. Her music does not cower or sneer in the face of darkness, as some of my favorite contemporary musicians do: it is mature, valuing the truth over appearing hip, and jaded. And that complexity is equally striking in her lyrics. The music has some seriously hard-hitting lines of the kind that will make you re-evaluate your life (and what, if I can be so pretentious as to ask, is the point of creating and experiencing art if it is not to change ourselves?). On "I Is What I Is," she sings, "America’s got talent to seduce you to reduce yourself/America’s got talent to seduce you to reduce everybody else." It’s that ability to get to the heart of the matter – on a sonic and thematic level- that makes her music so effective.
LINK: John McGovern’s Interview with Shilpa Ray.