Customer Reviews

The Tonic Rays

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you enjoy music, then your love this album, excellent drums, guitars, great bass, strong vocals, varied and exciting songs to blast over your music system. Wonderful lyrics, all originals, if you listen to music a must in your music collection.

I love this CD. Super production - raw and edgy. Beautiful male and female harmonies playing off each other the whole way through. Rough at times, tender at others. Poignant. Fun. Funky. Favorite tracks: Home, Strangest Kind, Too Lazy to Break Your Heart, and especially the gut crunching journey through break-up - Icon. Five stars.

I just discovered this album this week, via a notice on RockCritics. Nice one.

CHUCK EDDY
Billboard contributor

Top 10 Albums of 2008

1. Jamey Johnson, "That Lonesome Song" (Mercury).
2. Ross Johnson, "Make It Stop! The Most Of Ross Johnson" (Goner).
3. Rose Tattoo, "Blood Brothers" (Wacken).
4. Rick Springfield," Venus in Overdrive" (New Door/UMe).
5. The Knux, "Remind Me in 3 Days..." (Interscope).
6. The Tonic Rays, "The Tonic Rays" (thetonicrays.com).
7. Woodbox Gang, "Drunk As Dragons" (Alternative Tentacles).
8. Carter's Chord, "Carter's Chord" (Show Dog Nashville).
9. Phil Vassar, "Prayer of a Common Man" (Universal).
10. New Bloods, "The Secret Life" (Kill Rock Stars).

American music journalist Chuck Eddy was born in Detroit, Michigan. After beginning his career with The Village Voice and Creem, where he published one of the first national interviews with the Beastie Boys in the mid-1980s, Eddy went on to write for Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly and other national and local publications. He also authored two books: Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, and The Accidental Evolution of Rock and Roll.

Eddy served as the music editor at The Village Voice for seven years. After leaving the the Voice in 2006, he briefly wrote a thrice-weekly heavy metal blog for MTV Urge and a monthly page of capsule CD reviews in Harp magazine called The Last Roundup, before joinin Billboard magazine as a senior editor.

What a cool CD! The songs "Strangest Kind", "Home", and "Taxi Driver" are the three that are currently rattling around most in my head. "Strangest Kind" has a real dreamy, hypnotic quality to it. Marie Dance's haunting, plaintive vocal and Joe Cummings's subtle, understated guitar work especially nicely together, creating a moody, brooding atmosphere and feel. Similarly, they combine forces to delightful effect on "Home". I really dig the way Cummings's guitar licks loop all around, lifting up and supporting Dance's vocal, kind of reminds me of some early Allman Bros. And the intro to "Taxi Driver" is fabulous--what a flashing, blasting burst of energy, like a freight train barreling through town or a taxi shooting down the long avenues in New York City, trying to sail through as many green lights as possible. To say nothing of the playful vocals and the really great fade out, which leaves you breathless, wanting more.

Joe Cummings's guitar work throughout is really fine. I agree with Larry Nahlik: I also hear a bit of Jefferson Airplane and/or Jefferson Starship in there (circa Red Octopus and Spitfire) as in, say, "Disintegration". And some of the scuffy, scruffy guitar work reminds me a bit of Neil Young. And who but Cummings would think to throw in some electric sitar--very far out. I may be dating myself with these references, but then all those folks from back in the day don't make too shabby company. A wicked fine debut. The Tonic Rays should all be wicked right proud!

I hear strains of The Jefferson Airplane and Fleetwood Mac after Christine McVie joined. Joe Cummings' singing and guitar also remind me of Lou Reed/Velvet Underground a bit. "Strangest Kind" and "Home" are excellent; I can't hear them enough. "Too Lazy to Break Your Heart" is laugh-out-loud ironic. Nice job, Tonic Rays!

I first learned of The Tonic Rays a couple of years ago when they were playing honky-tonks around Southeast Asia and considering recording the songs the growing crowds were requesting over and over. This CD is as good as any indie production I have heard and, as far as I am concerned, worth the wait. The songs span the Ray's repertoire, with exceptional guitar work and solid drumming throughout. The third track, "Strangest Kind", a jazzy ballad, is one of my favorites.