Rays

Michael Nesmith

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 27, 2006)
• Original Release Date: April 27, 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Videoranch
• ASIN: B000FILN8U
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #145,153 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Review
His latest release, the largely instrumental Rays, doesn’t merely shake off but utterly transcends the dust of his past. --Joseph McCombs, Beyond Race Quarterly, April 10, 2006

Product Description
A cinematic journey of sound with elements of swing, jazz and instrumental funk that come together to form what Michael Nesmith calls "New Century Modern". “For a time I thought Rays had come together differently than any other project I had worked on, until it dawned on me all the various works I had been involved in had happened the same way and doing Rays was simply the first time I had seen it. Rays was my own personal Copernican Shift. For years Rays laid around in bits and pieces, and there were long periods when I would put them all away, like disparate parts of disparate building blocks. As if one was a recipe, another was a blueprint, another was a map. I couldn’t see how they fit together. I kept going, as much for not having anything else to do as for the curiosity of how it would all turn out, but I did keep going, and I’m glad I did. It was when I was putting on the horn parts, dreaming of Memphis and Stax Volt that it all came together. It was as if I had come into the garage one evening, and was looking at the detritus of a failed effort laying all over the floor, when suddenly there was this array, a kind! of order to it that I had never imagined. That was exciting. It felt new, and gave me the inspiration I needed to finish. This after four years of wandering in darkness --- which actually happened to be one of the lines from Rays. I had always imagined “emergence” as the gradual appearing of something that already exists but was just unseen. Rays was the first time I ever actually saw that happen. And now that I’ve seen it I am aware that all the past works have happened the same way.” ---Michael Nesmith March, 2006

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A souped-up, hot-rod music machine with a hint of melancholy, May 17, 2006

By	Anthony E. Pomes - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Lo and behold, the new Nez album hath arrived! RAYS is a synth-drenched collection of grooves, rhythms, and metronomically precise soundscapes that feels at first like a primer on how to make music with machines. Nesmith is himself credited with synth parts and sampling on nearly every track. There's something else at work here, though - something playful, ironic, and actually quite poignant that demands repeated listenings.

Drawing on his well-known affinity for sports cars and the like, Nesmith turns this new album into one long drive down a spacious sonic highway. The car motif is inescapable, with songs like "Friedrider," "Carhop," and "Boomcar" piling on top of one another in the track listing. Much of the album is instrumental, making one yearn to hear that distinctive Nesmith voice more often than you do. When you do hear his singing voice, however, the effect is gorgeous.

The final track, "Follows the Heart," is filled with an end-of-the-road longing that reveals the very real and tender heart residing within this brand-new Nez machine. Ever clever to the end, Nesmith even finds a way here to loop a familiar slogan from an old car commercial jingle into his song's lyric - furthering the dance between what is sacred and what is profane along the speeding highway of commercially-released music here in the "land o' pies," as Nesmith might call it. It's nice to hear from him again . . .

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Michael Nesmith Beams Rays Of Synth-Jazz Wonder, May 24, 2006

By	Michael Daly "Monkeesfan" (Wakefield, MA USA) - See all my reviews

Ten years have elapsed since Michael Nesmith's previous musical project, The Monkees' reunion LP Justus, and for his newest long player, Mike changes gears yet again to produce the stunning synth-jazz sleeper classic, Rays.

The old cliche about not judging books by the cover has always been confounded by Nesmith, but never in more effective manner than here, as Rays' cover jacket showing a striking and humorous cartoon illustration of Nesmith driving frantically looking for something to eat sets the mood of the LP right away. Not only is the disc a synth-jazz performance befitting use on long country drives with the top down, the cover illustration displays the disc's subtle autobiographical theme. From Monkee Mike's trek down the Hollywood Freeway into First National Band Nez's city trip in a jeep to Neighborhood Nuke Superiority Mike's encounter with some excessively happy barbecuers into Gihon Nez' frustration in the city into the nirvana of country Rays, the disc and cover illustration run a gamut that illustrates the road trip of life.

Of the album's twelve tracks, the most gripping is the opening instrumental Zip Ribbon. Cleverly inserting the opening lyric to "Cruisin'," the song is dominated by Chester Thompson's B3 Hammond; it's been perhaps since Jachym Young's riffing of Steve Miller's "Fly Like An Eagle" that an organ has so controlled the flow of a song, but Thompson gets ample reinforcement by some of Mike's best guitar work ever.

The title track gets to a deceptively simple start and is one of the comparatively few full vocal passes Mike commits to the album, and almost the only one where Mike double-tracks some vocals, and yet again the faux-Micky Dolenz-duet feel comes through and strengthens the performance.

Mike even inserts a humorous spoof of rap music in the intro to "Bells" before this track hits the synth-jazz flow that at times sounds a little like a late-90s Herb Alpert outtake, before hitting the Chester Thompson groove again in "Land O'Pies," which manages to somehow pull off the illusion of lead saxophone even though no sax is allowed on the album - Mike would probably say in response that adding sax to the album would warrant intervention from some record company's Standards & Practices over excessive sax and violins in modern music.

The disco-tempo "There It Is," highlighted by some inspired John Hobbs keyboards, precedes the closing track "Follows The Heart," a song that lives up to the title, a melancholy message of closure that seems a little out of character for Mike, but then the message's overall optimism reaches the listener, who remembers that the end sometimes is indeed but the beginning.

Mike defies convention yet again with Rays, and it is indeed what "Follows The Heart" makes clear - a feeling that follows the heart as it follows every ray of every night and day.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Journey Down a New Path, January 9, 2007

By	T. Houghton "Sunset Sam" (NY, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is not Michael Nesmith, Father of Country Rock. This is Michael Nesmith, Multi-Genre Master. Nez's sound has been continually evolving throughout his whole career, and Rays is no exception. While I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, it *is* a good album. Though the focus seems more on the music than the lyrics and there are sounds present that have not appeared on any other Nesmith album to date, it still has a very Nez feel. The experimenting, the themes, the way everything is layered...it's all Nez.

The first thing that came into my head after looking over this CD and its packaging was "a self-indulgent search for solace". On first listen, I thought, "It's Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma meets The Garden". The first thought doesn't hold true after listening to the album all the way through, but the second certainly does.

The only song I'm not particularly fond of is "Dynaflow"; I'm not sure why, but the vocals creep me out a little. But everything else, from "Zip Ribbon" to "Follows the Heart", struck a good chord with me.

As a long-time Nesmith fan, I'm not sure how this album would sound to someone who was hearing Nez's work for the first time. It's definitely not Nez as he was in the late '60s and early '70s, but I would say it is typical. He has always tried something new, and that's not something I can blame any musician for doing.