Mary Norris, Noelle Taylor, Houston Garrett and Jacob Lightsey are Salti Ray. The band seems to have music in their blood and started at a young age. That seems pretty evident when listening to their release The Right Thing. It’s a four-song EP that lasts around sixteen minutes.
This EP felt like pretty straightforward rock to my ears. It's just delivered really well and backed up by solid songwriting. The songs were easy to enjoy. Some releases are “growers'' but this wasn’t. It felt immediate. The band opens with “Parking Lot Airplanes'' and is a very accessible song with tons of melodies which were memorable. I would say the chorus in particular is one of the kind where you find yourself singing it a day later while at work. The vocal work is very strong and I found her voice appealing in a number of ways. That being said the instrumental aspects are also just sharp, in the pocket and drives. Suffice it to say the band sounds great. Next up is “Ocean City'' which is more upbeat almost like a summer jam. This song felt somewhere between pop and rock. The vocalist proves how dynamic she is with this song. She does more a spoken word stream of conscious type singing on the verse and then she belts it out on the chorus. “Jessica” is another great song. The song was a little more ominous and melancholy is in some ways. It rocks and perhaps drives more than anything before it. I was getting a little more of a Radiohead vibe here. The last song was quite beautiful and more arena rock in some ways. It felt like it could fill a stadium and some of that has to do with the reverb as well as when the drummer came in. The song reaches some very epic crescendos with her shouting “I don’t want to give up” which made me feel a little like I was in a Tony Robbins conference type situation. My only critique was that the songs felt a little piecemeal instead of cohesive. I felt like a signature or singular sound was a bit elusive when thinking about how the song related to each other. I’ve commented before that finding that X-factor that really defines a band is extremely hard to do but something worth giving thought to. I thought all four songs were well delivered and well written. The band just sounds professional from top to bottom and really know how to pack an emotional punch. I’m definitely looking forward to an LP at some point.
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