Amy Ray, Lung Of Love

By Kai Shuart

There’s a lot familiar in Amy Ray‘s new release Lung of Love. The urgent lyrics and heavy guitars that have long marked her as the more rock-oriented half of the Indigo Girls are very much present. The emotional territory of this album is also familiar, dealing with interpersonal relationships (such as in the opening track “When You’re Gone, You’re Gone”) and politics (such as in “From Haiti”).

However, there is a lot that feels fresh about this album. The lovely “I Didn’t” benefits from the combination of guitars and vintage organs. While this has been used in Indigo Girls songs such as “Moment of Forgiveness,” it is particularly welcome here as it lends the song a lot of warmth. No surprise there; according to promotional materials for the album, the organs were vintage models made by the likes of Moog, Wurlitzer, and Rhodes.

The songs also benefit from the additional perspective of a co-writer. Many longtime fans know that Amy writes alone and while that can yield some wonderfully urgent material—such as “Rural Faggot” from 2005’s Prom which contains the lyric “I know you want to know the truth/and I’m the dyke who’ll give it to you”—I think the addition of co-writer Greg Griffith tempers these sentiments from the blunt instrument they can be into a surgical scalpel.

We see this tempering in the aforementioned “From Haiti” which takes on the topic of the Haiti earthquake and communicates the strength of the Haitian people as well as the paternalistic, “we know what you need” attitude of more developed countries in the wake of the disaster. With lines like “Our feet get tough enough to take the travel/and our hands get tough enough to hold the thorns,” the writers’ sentiments are clearly with the people of Haiti, but using the image of toughening skin rather than righteous anger to communicate this sentiment is much more effective.

Lung of Love is, in the final analysis, an album that is just as immediate as we’d expect from Amy Ray, but more precise in its approach, and that precision is a welcome addition to Amy’s songwriting repertoire.

Lung of Love (Amy Ray’s sixth solo album) was released on February 28 by Daemon Records and is available on Amy’s website.

Tour Dates:
03/10/12 Atlanta, GA @Variety Playhouse
03/11/12 Gainesville, FL @Double Down Live
03/14/12 – 03/18/12 Austin, TX SXSW
03/20/12 Tucson, AZ @Plush Room
03/21/12 Phoenix, AZ @Crescent Ballroom
03/23/12 Los Angeles, CA @Bootleg Theater
03/24/12 San Luis Obispo, CA @SLO Brewing Company
03/25/12 San Francisco, CA @Great American Music Hall
03/27/12 Portland, OR vDoug Fir Lounge
03/28/12 Seattle, WA @Tractor Tavern
03/29/12 Olympia, WA @Capital Theater Backstage
03/31/12 Salt Lake City, UT @The State Room
04/01/12 Denver, CO @Bluebird Theater
04/11/12 Baltimore, MD @Ram’s Head On Stage
04/13/12 Arlington, VA @IOTA Club and Cafe
04/14/12 Brooklyn, NY @The Bell House
04/15/12 New York City, NY @The City Winery
04/17/12 Philadelphia, PA @World Cafe Live Downstairs
04/18/12 Cambridge, MA @Brighton Music Hall
04/20/12 Asbury Park, NJ @The Saint
04/21/12 Durham, NC @The Casbah