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Fun!

by May Rio

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about

May Rio is a solo project. For her, the consummation of ‘solo’ is handled with surprising results. At one moment, May Rio is a band with drums, synths, and guitars. A club says no drums? Fine. Now her set is arranged for cello, piano, saxophone, and backing vocals. It is this latter rearrangement of her songs that became her Elegant Ensemble, debuting in small clubs across New York City after her sophomore LP, French Bath, was released last spring.

May Rio’s music is what May Rio says it is. These studio recordings are clever interventions into what a catalog of songs can look and sound like. We know from covers like Devo’s “Satisfaction” (made famous first by The Rolling Stones) that re-recording can effectively un-’cover’ new meanings of songs past. Across Elegant Ensemble, May Rio effectively covers herself with similarly inspired results.

Few things expose quality songwriting quite like removing the studio-sheen of contemporary production. Usually, such defoliation unveils vacuity. May’s songs, no less stripped, emerge as newly refined instead. Somewhere between Goldfrapp’s Felt Mountain and a twee-less Regina Spektor; Elegant Ensemble is like a backpacker carrying only bare necessities on a cross-continental trip.

Featuring one new song, “Fun!,” and thirteen previously released songs with new arrangements, Elegant Ensemble is brave in its exhibition of what ‘new’ can mean. Despite being seen and heard before, there is nothing familiar here except May, who shows herself across these recordings with an immediacy that is rare in show business. “songForNeo,” off her 2021 debut, Easy Bammer, is case in point: it forwardly displays the experimentalism which has always been woven coyly throughout May’s repertoire, particularly in saxophonist Syl DuBenion and Daniel Haas’s saxophone/cello coda heterophony. “Aspartame,” the striking ballad from her follow-up record, French Bath, is finally given the room it deserves, delivering to the listener a proper knock-out: the kind of icy wash that brings on an overwhelming memory of warmth. These recordings stay with you. They’re repeatable. And they really sound like nothing else.

Ever a true artist, May Rio defies expectation. She is a truly original thinker. This is evident in Rio’s songwriting as much as it is evident in her understanding of how songs can be presented. Elegant Ensemble is a love letter to creative freedom and a middle finger to convention. May Rio makes practice out of perfect.

lyrics

Sweet sixteen I get to take a spin
Windows rolled down wind’s all on my skin
T-boned by a speeding stoner hard
Momma’s Trooper’s totaled but what’s worse
Is it was fun

Back when legos built the world and more
Ships and spaceships, buildings with no doors
Good to learn but I’m no engineer
No, what I learned was just how good it feels
To smash apart

You get me off like breaking glass, like
Busted lips, like breasts and asses
Tug my hair and kill my mother
Where you go I’ll follow your
Destruction

credits

released March 6, 2024
Written & Performed by May Rio
Produced by May Rio and Tom Moore
Arangements by May Rio, Patrick Latham, and Daniel Haas
Engineered by Eamon Ford and Greg Castro
Mixed by Eamon Ford
Mastered by Ryan Power
Photos/Art by Logan White

(c)&(p) May Rio under exclusive license to Dots Per Inch Music, LLC


May Rio - vocals
Patrick Latham - grand piano
Daniel Haas - cello
Syl DuBenion - saxophone
Ashley Mayorquin - backing vocals
Kelsea Fedder - backing vocals

Recorded at Outlier Inn, NY 2024.

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May Rio New York, New York

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