The wonderfully twisted, self-possessed, wry, leather jacket-armored dark humored queen of the downtown night, Shilpa Ray, survived working the door at the Lower East Side / New York City bar Pianos. And she’s turned that harsh reality into an album of cutting commentary.

On the 2017 record Door Girl, Shilpa Ray plays with throwback “girl group” sounds – except she’s got backing guy vocals and crisp production. Her songs are full of acerbic observations on desperate people, some quite personal - "Manhattanoid Creepazoids," "Revelations of a Stamp Monkey," and "Rockaway Blues"; the portraits are far from pretty, and definitely no longer glittering, with a blaze-of-lights-at-closing-time-feel delivered in her singular brassy croon and growl. Shilpa Ray joins us, (sans harmonium), in the studio to play some of these songs. (Archives, 2017.)