Reid Paley

With a music career spanning over 25 years and a new album, Approximate Hellhound (vs The Monkey Demon), Reid Paley shows no signs of mellowing down. And why should he when he still has many tales to tell? Well known on the American music scene, Reid Paley is little known in the UK, but hopefully his latest album and live dates in 2009 will change that, and show us New York’s best kept rock ‘n’ roll secret.

Born in Brooklyn, Reid Paley’s love affair with music started when he was still in his mother’s womb. His father, a musician and teacher, would put a tuning fork to his pregnant wife’s stomach to make the unborn baby kick. And kick he did, all the way to Pittsburgh in 1980 where he formed The Five, a punk rock band who enjoyed a certain notoriety among the Pittsburgh scene ,music journalists and boffins.
After a while, the band, much to Paley’s annoyance, decided to move to Boston where the Pixies and Throwing Muses would open their live shows.
Despite enjoying cult status, The Five never got the recognition they deserved. However the time in Boston wasn’t a waste. Paley had made some deep and long-lasting friendships there, including the one with Pixies’ front man Frank Black (AKA Black Francis) with whom he’s still friends with to this day.

Eventually Reid Paley returned to his native Brooklyn, where he started playing as a solo act, accompanied by his guitars and carried by his distinctive gravelly voice. With his mix of old school rock and roll, blues and jazz, drunken tales of life, love and loss, Paley attracted the interest of Sub Pop who, in 1997, released Reid’s first “proper” (i.e. not a self released demo sold at gigs) single, Time For You/The Best Of All.
Two years later Lucky’s Tune, his first solo album, produced by Frank Black, followed to huge critical acclaim.
His second album,  Revival, produced by Eric Drew Feldman (Captain Beefheart, PJ Harvey, Pixies, Pere Ubu, dEus, The Polyphonic Spree and Charlotte Hatherley are just some of his collaborations) was released a year later and once again Paley’s bluesy noir rock proved its creator’s talent and wit with songs like Lucky’s Tune, Never Drink Alone and This Fucking Town.
A brilliant lyricist, Paley’s observations and stories of drunken nights, sunrises in New York and dangerous bites of the biblical apple are disarming, funny and spit honesty right at your face.
There’s no bullshitting, no pretending and no denying, he tells it like it is and you can sense that he doesn’t have any time or interest in any sort of pretence or contrived behaviour. I suspect as a child he was quite happy to take his cough medicine just like that, without any addition of sugar. That is not to say that he comes across as bitter or unpleasant in any way. Quite the opposite, he knows that it’s bitter and he can still take it, with a laugh.

His third and latest effort, Approximate Hellhound doesn’t disappoint. “See You Again” with its saloon rock and roll sucks you straight into the record and it’s an apt opener to a journey of smoky American speakeasies, late nights and floods of liquor.  And this is exactly what you will get (smokiness aside) when Reid Paley plays in the UK in 2009. 
A gifted performer, Paley’s charisma and energy onstage are palpable and his voice, already deep, husky and dirty on record, becomes like tightly bundled barbwire on bourbon live. And that’s a good thing.

With Frank Black and The Catholics and New York’s chanteuse Peg Simone having already covered some of Reid Paley’s songs, it’s only a matter of time until this New Yorker becomes a legend on this side of the pond too.

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Approximate Hellhound is out now on Metaphor Rhythms and available from www.amazon.com and iTunes
Check out www.reidpaley.com for live dates in 2009