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The Vanrays
Put It Out
Bonerattle - 2023
Michael Panontin
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The Vanrays issued Put It Out in the early part of 2023, at a time when that COVID thing was just a tiny speck in our collective rear view mirrors. But like many records released of late, this album - the Vancouver group's first full-length after issuing a debut EP a few years back - is a product of the pandemic. And for an eight-piece soul band looking for that live-off-the-floor sound, the challenges were that much greater.
"With only bed tracks recorded before the lockdown, we were forced to improvise," the Vanrays' keyboardist Gord Rempel explained. "We remotely finished a couple songs as demos compete with Zoom-like videos that we released as The Social Distanced Demos on Bandcamp. Slowly, we completed recording the album, instrument by instrument together and apart. I recorded many of my organ and piano parts in my garage studio. Others ventured into Brian Barr's studio to record their parts with masks and social distancing."
The usual touchstones of deep soul, like punchy horns, taut rhythms and a driving organ, are all over Put It Out, though singer Spencer McKinnon steers clear of any such labels, preferring to cheekily dub the Vanray's sound "East Van soul". The grittier tracks, like the opening 'Lovin' Man' or the garagy 'Shake My Hand', are the strongest…and the most fun. But the band is also versatile, stippling the record with breezier tracks like 'Hard Times' and 'Made It', the latter a good chance for McKinnon to showcase his impressive falsetto. Credit as well goes to producer Scott Fletcher, who, in his own words, "took this genre to a new place without it being a museum piece".
Amen to that.
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