DISHES & PILLS - Audrey Ryan

Folkwit Records (f0021)

CD Album - £7.99(GBP) + P&P

Track list:

Make Dead
No Difference
Dishes & Pills
Cancer Heart
Later Alligator
People
Babies
Shiny Things
Panda Song
Simplify
Took Me There
Primadona
Ukalalee Song
Messing Around

“A lush, beautifully arranged slice of indie pop, “Dishes & Pills” is the work of an intelligent songwriter and composer with a clear vision of the music. There are elements of baroque ’60s pop such as The Zombies or the Beach Boys, but her clear musical contemporaries are ambitious, sensitive, smart songwriters such as Sufjan Stevens, John Vanderslice, and Feist.”

- Bangor Daily

“Theatrical, quirky, feels orchestral while remaining stripped-down; the Decemberists with a female singer — a very good thing.”

-Mass Live

“A genuine weirdo, Ryan’s songwriting and vocal style also might remind one of more modern female artists from Bjork to Shivaree to The Softies, and the menagerie of instrumentation is more out on the lunatic fringe à la the Dresden Dolls or Daniel Johnston. It’s a truly enjoyable musical schizophrenia that you could listen to 50 times and still hear something different each time.”

-Valley Advocate

“The result is a sprawling epic of indie-folk ingenuity. Structurally, her tunes are pure pop. But she infuses her arrangements with a jazz sensibility, expertly decking out the tunes with all the bells and whistles — quite literally, in most cases. Her work here more closely resembles the experimental folk orchestrations of Sufjan Stevens. Like Michigan’s eclectic tunesmith, Ryan excels at crafting quirkily diverse soundscapes that augment her intricate wordplay. Also like Stevens, her real strength lies in her subtly engaging songwriting; despite the wealth of aural delicacies found on Dishes & Pills, one gets the feeling that these songs would be just as effective if stripped down to guitar and Ryan’s charmingly expressive voice.”

-Seven Days (Dan Bolles)

“Ryan’s inventive songwriting, which adds surreal sounds and multifarious instrumentation to a solid folk-rock core, keeps all 14 tracks sounding mostly fresh and original. The wildly diverse instrumentation peppers each song with new trinkets of spacey and intriguing sound that dangles like fish bait around the listener’s ear. Her highly personal lyrics are also absorbing. Although most of the songs have a lighthearted feel, the words are often cynical and self-deprecating, addressing topics that range from cancer to dead-end relationships to pills, marijuana and booze. Some of the songs are heavier than others, both lyrically and musically, but the imaginative spirit never wanes”

-The Wire 

Audrey Ryan performing 'People' on Balcony TV, Dublin