With her raging new album Portrait of a Lady, New York punk rock/art pop songwriter Shilpa Ray has created her most searing and personal album to date. Written in the wake of the #metoo movement and the weathering years of the Trump Administration, the record finds Ray processing her own experiences with abuse, layering autobiographical detail with ferocious bon mots and surrealistic rock & roll gloss. Featuring singles like the Stooges-styled “Manic Pixie Dream Cunt,” the reverb soaked dream pop of “Heteronormative Horseshit Blues,” and the hard-charging “Bootlickers of the Patriarchy,” the album draws from a stylistic palette of synths, electronic beats, and hard rock guitars, inspired by artists like Ministry, Billy Idol, Pat Benetar, and the glittery, jagged but still pop guitars of Los Angeles hair metal.

The idea for Portrait of a Lady Ray stretches back Ray’s experience with photos from Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a personal expose of the photographer’s time in the No Wave scene of New York in the late ‘70s. “It shook me to my core and made me reflect on my own experiences with sexual assault and abuse,” Ray says. She couldn’t shake the idea of a concept album—a full-throated rock album about being a survivor—but found herself hesitating until 2019, when she began to approach the concept in earnest… more
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