May Rio Releases Reimagined Songs in New EP 'Elegant Ensemble'

May Rio has shared her new LP, Elegant Ensemble.

Featuring one new song, “Fun!,” and the fourteen previously released tracks with new arrangements, Elegant Ensemble is brave in its exhibition of what ‘new’ can mean. These songs, previously studio-shined, are now reduced to essentials, featuring grand piano, cello, backing vocals, and some saxophone. May’s voice dances above it all with characteristic grace. Rolling Stone praised this new arrangement by saying “It’s a format that works for her, spotlighting her vocals to spellbinding effect. Rio sounded like a star.” Info here. 

French Bath received praise from DAZED, office, Paper, FADER, and more. Alt Press compared May’s vocals to “Lizzy Grant-era Lana Del Rey... maraschino cherry pop — extremely sweet, but blunt and saucy, and nothing short of earworms.” Supporting the record next month, May will hit the road with Kacy Hill in late May/early June (dates below). 

May Rio’s music is what May Rio says it is. These studio recordings are clever interventions into what a catalog of songs can look and sound like. Like Devo’s “Satisfaction” (made famous first by The Rolling Stones) that re-recording can effectively un-’cover’ new meanings of songs past. Across Elegant Ensemble, May Rio effectively covers herself with similarly inspired results. 

Of “Aspartame”, May Rio says, “By the time we recorded the elegant version of "Aspartame" in January, the whole band was deeply synchronized. We all knew what it needed to sound like; if I started to give a player my notes, they could finish my thoughts or sentences. It felt like we could read each other's minds during the three-minute runtime.​​”

Few things expose quality songwriting quite like removing the studio-sheen of contemporary production. Usually, such defoliation unveils vacuity. May’s songs, no less stripped, emerge as newly refined instead. Somewhere between Goldfrapp’s Felt Mountain and a twee-less Regina Spektor; Elegant Ensemble is like a backpacker carrying only bare necessities on a cross-continental trip. 

Despite these songs’ being seen and heard before, there is nothing familiar here except May, who shows herself across these recordings with an immediacy that is rare in show business. “songForNeo,” off her 2021 debut, Easy Bammer, is case in point: it forwardly displays the experimentalism which has always been woven coyly throughout May’s repertoire, particularly in saxophonist Syl DuBenion and Daniel Haas’s saxophone/cello coda heterophony. “Aspartame,” the striking ballad from her follow-up record, French Bath, is finally given the room it deserves, delivering to the listener a proper knock-out: the kind of icy wash that brings on an overwhelming memory of warmth. These recordings stay with you. They’re repeatable. And they really sound like nothing else.

Ever a true artist, May Rio defies expectation. She is a truly original thinker. This is evident in Rio’s songwriting as much as it is evident in her understanding of how songs can be presented. Elegant Ensemble is a love letter to creative freedom and a middle finger to convention. May Rio makes practice out of perfect.

TOUR w/ Kacy Hill

5/29 - DC - Songbyrd Music House

5/30 - Brooklyn - Music Hall of Williamsburg

5/31 - Philadelphia - Johnny Brenda’s

TRACKLIST:

1. Need You Like 
2. Reservations 
3. songForNeo 
4. NYC UMTs 
5. Dollars 
6. Getaway 
7. Butter 
8. Monkey Do 
9. Cursed Fortuna 
10. Aspartame 
11. Party Jail
12.  I'm Not Crazy 
13. Mr. Horny Puke Man 
14. Fun! 
15. Self Service

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