RYAN DAVIS 038 THE ROADHOUSE BAND 8211 New Threats From The Soul 8211 2LP 8211 White Vinyl

2LP – Indies Exclusive Limited Edition White Vinyl. Only 250 copies in this repress. Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band the project of Louisville-based visual artist, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Ryan Davis announce their new album, New Threats From The Soul, out 25th July on Tough Loveand release its lead single and title track (which features guest vocalist Catherine Irwin of legendary Louisville band Freakwater). 2023s Dancing On The Edge was quickly beloved by those who stumbled upon it, earning high praise from publications like Pitchfork & The Line Of Best Fit, who deemed it a remarkable, endlessly rewarding debut. His second album, New Threats From The Soul, reckons mightily with the perplexities of human efficacy and agency in an absurd and debased world. This probably sounds hopelessly plodding and severe. It is notnot remotely. Its a shit-ton of fun. The songs are all earwigs; the arrangements genuinely thrilling, enlivening efforts by the crackerjacks that comprise the sprawling Roadhouse Band. Each trip through the record reveals more of the depth and breadth and tangle of its tapestry. Across New Threats, Ryan manages near-rhymes that a hundred years worth of monkeys labouring at Chat GPT-enabled typewriters couldnt achieve: bromeliad and necrophiliac; urinal and de Chirico. Kinky Friedman lamented that people thought his funny songs were sad and his sad songs were funny, when they were both simultaneously. Like the Kinkster, Ryan can make you laugh through a lump in your throat. In his formidable crew of harmony singers there are four of the most gifted lyricists & vocalists to currently walk among usCatherine Irwin, Will Oldham, Lou Turner, Myriam Gendron which testifies to the profound heft of his writing (these folks dont often sign up to sing pap). New Threats From The Soul is a masterclass in reducing the sublime to the prosaic, immensity to infinitesimally, and vice versa (the trick can only work both ways). Everything in our universe is essentially flotsam or jetsam, rubbish heaps of fragments and shards. We, especially, are jerry-rigs of bubblegum and driftwood, inconsistencies and incoherencies, dead dreams and necrophagous hopes, mismeasurements between the place where [we are] and the place where [we] could have been, although somehow notmiracle of miraclesbereft of simple joys, as Davis sings on todays single. The record functions in parallel with Kafkas winking dictum that there is an infinite amount of hope in the universe, just not for us. New Threats suggests that maybe, just maybe, something like redemption is possible, but only once were entirely emptied out and hawked in toto down at Walden Pawn. Ryan Davis traces lifes edgescontemplating the human capacities for open-hearted euphoria and harrowing pain. Pitchfork. What Dancing On The Edge is is a demonstration, brought to life by Davis unique voice. that theres joy in all this messiness, a certain triumph in overcoming your demons. The Quietus. [Davis is] someone with the originality, wit and ambition to cut through the murk. Uncut. RIYL: Silver Jews, Bill Callahan, Lambchop, Cass McCoombs, Sparklehorse. Tracklist: A1. New Threats From The SoulA2. Monte Carlo / No Limits B1. Mutilation Springs C1. Better If You Make MeC2. The Simple Joy D1. Mutilation FallsD2. Crass Shadows at Walden Pawn