Formerly known as Teen Suicide, songwriter Sam Ray returns under a different moniker with a new release on Run For Cover Records, which is not actually that new, introduced by What kind of love?, a bleak and really immersive piece of music that serves as the album's first single.
"I haven’t kept track of how many suicide attempts I’ve made in my life," Ray unveils in a very long statement about the album's introversion and its creative process. "There are impulsive, desperate actions that accomplish only personal embarrassment; there are calculated, deliberate times where I am like a meteor falling and burning in the atmosphere but unable to strike the ground. I don’t know how to sort them. I’m not even sure how to delineate them, and I’m not sure how many more ways there are to categorize them – nor if it’s even healthy. I don’t think it’s something worth speaking about further. It’s also not worth speaking about the circumstances in my life that lead to me making this record. I will say only that it’s not something I’ve ever felt or experienced before or since, and I hope to never experience anything like it again."
Fucking Bliss was recorded in the course of nine days in May 2015, even before Ray's last album as Teen Suicide, and it sounds weightier than any of the nonetheless ponderous previous works of his. He further explains: "It uses vocals in a way I always want to – manipulated, buried, obscured, affected, or horrifically mangled – to deconstruct basic pop music and convey something so personal and real, a state of mind, rather than a narrative, really."
Say farewell to the great Teen Suicide and welcome their enigmatic reincarnation as American Pleasure Club, coming in with a loud bang.
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