From what I can gather, there was never any plan for 'It's A Shame About Gemma Ray' ever to be recorded, let alone released as the follow-up to Ms. Ray's award-winning 'Lights Out Zoltar!' album.
So how do we come to have it in our midst? Blame the enforced Christmas break, it seems, for a bored, but inspired Gemma spent the period between Xmas 2009 and New Year 2010 knocking off this covers album at New York's Hed studio with Matt Verta-Ray (Heavy Trash, Madder Rose). It went so well that the end results made up – voila! - a new, unscheduled Gemma Ray album after five intensive days of graft.
If you're a regular around these parts, you'll probably already know that this writer and the term 'covers album' don't usually make comfortable bedfellows. However, 'It's A Shame About Gemma Ray' is worth making a detour for. Despite its' title, it contains no Lemonheads songs whatsoever. What it does proffer are 16 stark re-workings of cult classics ripped from songbooks as disparate as George Gershwin and The Gun Club and virtually all of 'em are worth the price of admission.
The vibe is stripped-down and predatory throughout, with more than just a hint of both Film Noir and David Lynch hanging in the air. Vibrato guitars and vocals are centre stage, occasionally joined by whirring organs, Delta slide, basic drum machine and spare additional percussion. The fullest 'band'-sounding track is probably her visceral skewering of Lee Hazlewood's 'I'd Rather Be Your Enemy', but its' dense thicket of guitars and Mo Tucker-style drum stomp are still headily primeval.
Elsewhere, an impressively catholic collection of tracks are given bruised and eerie treatments. Early highlights include a spectral and smouldering take of The Gun Club's 'Ghost On The Highway', a suggestively skeletal version of Alex Harvey's 'Swampsnake' and a brilliantly narcotic re-invention of Mudhoney's 'Touch Me, I'm Sick' full of diseased, half-speed Dick Dale guitars.
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Not all of the selections are cult items, though it would be hard to find much of the winsome original version of Buddy Holly's 'True Love Ways' in Ray's bleak and numb deconstruction, here re-named 'Everyday'. It's arguably more easily recognisable than her nervy, fractured take on 'Hey Big Spender', mind. You'd need an industrial-strength ear trumpet to hear any Shirley Bassey in here. Perhaps the most unlikely selection of all is 'Bei Mir Bist Du Shein': a favourite tune of many leading Nazis until it was discovered (oh the irony) that the song had Jewish origins. Ray sings it primarily in English and its' hot-blooded feel and Spy theme guitar solo are truly evocative.
By the time its' credits roll, 'It's a Shame About Gemma Ray' has made several notches on the bedpost, left the leading man with a dagger sticking out of his heart and made off to Rio with the life insurance. It's a dark-hearted seduction, but it'll ensnare you nonetheless. Not bad for five days of studio down-time over the festive season.
Gemma Ray on Myspace
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