Interview with May Rio
We had the pleasure of interviewing May Rio over Zoom video!\xa0
NYC\u2019s\xa0May Rio Sembera\xa0of\xa0Poppies\xa0released her debut album\xa0Easy Bammer\xa0via\xa0Dots Per Inch Music.
Produced by\xa0Tony or Tony\xa0and mastered by\xa0Sarah Register (Ariana Grande, Yaeji, The Shins),\xa0Easy Bammer\xa0is inspired in part by time spent touring with\xa0Poppies, as well as the year the world went into lockdown. On her debut solo album,\xa0May\xa0turns months of isolation into a curious & hyperreal reflection on memory of a time in New York City before stay-at-home-orders and lukewarm take-out\u2014reflections on a time when staying at home & thinking felt like an unreasonable request of the cosmos.\xa0Easy Bammer\xa0gives its listener a chance to experience the warmth & quiet laughter of reflection; it does so in a time otherwise reserved for most as an endless cycle of waiting for new headlines.
Easy Bammer\xa0is inspired in part by May\u2019s time touring with her band,\xa0Poppies. This time of transient couch-surfing is endemic to the DIY performer, the musician sentenced to serve as an advertisement for herself\u2014to play the gracious guest, night after night, with free cheap beer and snacks-for-dinner-dining. This experience, described in the song\xa0\u201cParty Jail,\u201d\xa0is a groundhog\u2019s day of early-20s hedonism where one must keep smiling through a hangover that inches towards delirium. But the kindness of these hosts and their patronage is not lost on May, either.\xa0
Such a life on the basement show circuit was already a distant memory by the time work began on the recordings that became\xa0Easy Bammer. The airborne menace known as COVID-19 would not only interrupt, but come to define the making of the project. With live\xa0shows no longer an option, these songs were developed alone in ad hoc home studios instead.\xa0This process made the idea of an actual party jail more appealing than it was initially meant to be, but such a taunting positivity is always the lair of the devil in the detail. This almost-seesaw feeling of \u201cit sounds so fun\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m getting tired\u201d makes the unique and curious oddness of\xa0Easy Bammer\xa0a testament to feeling two ways at once and being okay with it.
It is May Rio\u2019s personality and deftness that ultimately shine and make her solo debut the unexpected journey that it is. It is intelligent like a riddle and catchy like an over-saturated cartoon. May says, \u201cSame as a lot of people, I felt my world get a lot smaller when the pandemic hit. I\u2019d spent hardly any time at home before, and now this cozy place of refuge\u2014- my bedroom \u2014 had been transformed into a cozy cell. I think in the album, I\u2019m acting out a lot that I wouldn\u2019t be able to do in real life. I know, for instance, I probably shouldn\u2019t (or can\u2019t) act on this impulse, or say this to so-and-so\u2026 but I can wrap it up in these lyrics and box it in with this melody....These songs became a pillow for me to scream, or sob, into. And sometimes I\u2019m laughing.\u201d
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