Music

Ravi Shavi Ride Again

PVD rockers to drop debut LP on June 2

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There are plenty of telltale signs that spring has given way to summer, like cook out smoke billowing from backyards or infuriating selfies posted from the beach while you’re stuck at the office. But for me, summer hasn’t started until I’ve driven down the entire length of Broadway with my window down and my stereo unapologetically loud. Usually it’s a cut off of Sticky Fingers or Physical Graffiti, maybe early Elvis Costello or something from The White Stripes, but this year I’m welcoming warmer days with something closer to home.

Enter Ravi Shavi’s first full-length LP, Ravi Shavi, ten cuts of retro-revisionist garage pop. This is exactly the kind of rock and roll I’m looking for when I want everyone to know what I’m listening to. It insists upon being played with wind in your hair and guarantees a lopsided, left-arm-favoring trucker’s tan.

And it’s not just that it’s solid rock and roll, it’s that it’s all kinds of solid rock and roll. You couldn’t throw a rock at a music-themed Wikipedia page and not hit a style being pulled from here, though the band is a little more deliberate than that with their choices. Ravi Shavi are no mere pretenders, dabbling willy-nilly in rock’s storied past.

“The bulk of the material on the record was written with an approach that was increasingly attentive to form and the songwriting conventions associated with pop music,” explains frontman Rafay Rashid – joined by Bryan Fielding on bass, Andrew Wilmarth on drums and Nick Politelli on guitar. “This was the first time I realized I wanted the songs to sound and feel a certain way. In a sense these songs represent the first direct articulation of the various ideas and feelings that had been jolting out of my brain throughout the majority of my life.”

It’s easy to hear that philosophy put into practice on this LP. It plays like cherry picking from several different sub-genres of rock and shows how a singular vision can make even seemingly disparate elements work in harmony with one another.

“I’m most captivated by artists who have been able to transcend genre and create something unique. I think that’s vital,” says Rafay. “Dirty and polished are not mutually exclusive in my head.”

The record has no shortage of either. The opening track, “Indecisions,” is a distorted bit of old-fashioned pop rock. Rafay’s voice, fuzz-laced and crooning, welcomes listeners to the album with “You’re out of my league, but I’m in my element,” and across the ten tracks Rafay and the boys are firmly in their element. From the punchy punk of “Bloody Opus” to the reverbed, early New Wave sounds of “Critters” to the garage rock love letter to bad behavior “Amphetamine,” Ravi Shavi brings out the innate similarities hiding under the surface of all shades of rock, resulting in a wildly entertaining sonic kaleidoscope of a record.

“I think the closer you zoom in on any genre of music, the similarities between that genre and another become increasingly easy to draw. For example, I think the screams of James Brown and Otis Redding are just as, if not more, dirty and abrasive than the sounds found in the music of The Sex Pistols.”

Sharing the DNA of surf, various strains of punk (including proto- and post-), a garage rock sensibility and the occasional Iggy-esque snarl, Ravi Shavi is exactly what the doctor ordered. If this record isn’t a key part of your summer soundtrack then you’re doing it wrong. Bursting with charisma and lo-fi energy, Ravi Shavi has struck the perfect balance between earworm hummability and grungy, stripped down street cred. No matter what brand of rock you subscribe to, there’s something here for you.

Ravi Shavi
Ravi Shavi will be released June 2 on Almost Ready Records 

Ravi Shavi, Rafay Rashid, providence rock and roll, summer, summer music, summer soundtrack, rock and roll, providence monthly, tony pacitti, almost ready records

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