Idle Ray

***Michigan pop group Idle Ray slowly focalized from several different cloudy ideas. Right around the end of 2019, songwriter/producer Fred Thomas was transitioning from several years of touring solo, working on new songs that dug into four track roots that had been the foundation of Saturday Looks Good To Me, Failed Flowers, and so many of his bands over the years. At the same time, he and Frances Ma (one of the driving forces of fuzzed-out Detroit dreampop band Don't) had been workshopping song ideas and playing scattered gigs as Frankie & Fred. Over the course of a few weird years, the two projects folded into one another, and expanded into a trio with the addition of bassist Devon Clausen. Though the self-titled Idle Ray album that came out in 2021 had been scrapped together from Fred's solo four-track experiments, "Corridors of Summer" is the first output from the full band, and also the first Idle Ray song with Frankie on lead vocals. "Corridors" was first shared online in early 2022, but the 7" features a different, expanded mix. The song's images of smiling faces bleared by the hot summer sun barely conceals its underlying disgust. It's a deceptively dreamy song about taking one look at the crowded beach, the line in front of the overhyped brunch spot, or even the costumery at the DIY space and turning around immediately. B-side "Unremarkable Things" is an outlier in the Idle Ray catalog, more in line with slow moving shoegaze than the anxious guitar pop of the LP and the live show, but just as melodic. Limited to 300 copies.