That s what it says on a makeshift sign on the wall above Shilpa Ray s head on her latest record, Door Girl. Sometimes in life it helps to take the signs one encounters literally. Girls are free to make mistakes. Girls are free to come and go. Girls are free of all those preconceived notions attached to what it is to be a girl. Gazing with a mixture of serenity and weary imperiousness beneath that sign is Shilpa Ray. Door Girl takes as its titular inspiration her time working the door at Lower East Side bar Pianos, its reputation one of hard-scrabble survival and the inspiration of desperation. Shilpa Ray has seen it all.
Girls are free to bear witness.
“Shilpa Ray Stars as Door Girl” beckons from the cover of Door Girl in pink neon - reminiscent of nothing less than the pink lipstick that spells out New York Dolls on the cover of their similarly explosive record. The seething frenzy of a feeding frenzy - the hallmark of closing time desperation - whirls around her on the cover, people moving past so quickly that they become a smear of obscurity even as she watches everything by the door. Or is it merely normal life, speeding across her hemisphere in that blasé and banal way that yields few treasures except those that only the most perceptive of all... more
credits
released September 22, 2017