Title - Sweet Delusions
Artist - Eddy Lee Ryder
For those not in the know, self-proclaimed “demented pop” chanteuse Eddy Lee Ryder makes her long-awaited full-length debut with Sweet Delusions, synthesizing timeless songcraft, dramatic introspection, and infinite pop smarts to create a breathtaking song cycle of apocalyptic romance and anxious regret, badly broken hearts, and wishful hope for the future.
Songs like “Highwaymen” and the deceptively optimistic title track, Ryder – known to friends and family as Woodstock, NY-based singer-songwriter Liz Brennan – fusing chanson and country, indie and standards, into her own strain of modernist pop Americana, all informed by her distinctively wry sense of humor and classic rock spirit.
That creative capriciousness resonates throughout the album, Ryder’s witty but deeply reflective songwriting offering up keenly detailed snapshots of secret intimacies, small cruelties, and a relationship gone horribly south.
Quirky and charming while still precise and powerfully personal, Sweet Delusions reveals Eddy Lee Ryder as a one-of-a-kind new artist, her unabashed heartache and beguiling humor completely her own yet as identifiable and real as any of our own.
“I want my music to carry multiple emotions, just like every experience,” Ryder says. “Nostalgia, absurdity, humor, and sorrow.”
1. Sweet Delusions
2. Highwaymen
3. Bad Decisions
4. Joke Is On Me
5. Antarctica
6. Pennyroyal Tea
7. Simple Touch
8. Shoop Shoop Shut Up
9. Smoke and Mirrors
10. Only Real Cowboy
11. County Fair
Penned and performed with uncommon brio and invention, this musically resplendent new recording opens on the veritably sweeping title track Sweet Delusions and the atmospheric, shimmering twang of Highwaymen, and then we get the silky smooth, low slung country balladry of Bad Decisions, the gentle melodic hipsway of Joke Is On Me and then comes the veritably ethereal Antarctica.
Along next is a shadowy ambiance that drives Pennyroyal Tea and the pop-country vibe of Simple Touch and they are in turn backed seamlessly by the sweeping balladry of Shoop Shoop Shut Up, the gently rambunctious foot-tapper Smoke and Mirrors, the album rounding out on the storytelling that drives Only Real Cowboy, closing on the delicately-hued, airy ballad County Fair.
Eddy Lee Ryder has toured with Howie Day, been synched in the smash horror it, “Terrifier 2”, and featured in American Songwriter & Pop Matters. She has played live on Jam in the Van, and Radio Woodstock.
Official Spotify Purchase Link
www.eddyleeryder.com
Eddy Lee Ryder @ Facebook