NEW RELEASE
Wasting Time – Ray Ryder
It is easy to understand why Ray Ryder is the new rising star of the Australian country music scene.
He has toured extensively and attracted a wide fan base. He’s shared the stage with some of the luminaries of Australian music including Lee Kernaghan, Missy Higgins, James Reyne, Ian Moss, Mark Seymour and The McClymonts. Hailing from Western Australia, Ray’s new single Wasting Time is the track that’s going expose his music to a mainstream music audience.
It’s straight ahead guitar-driven country-pop-rock song bursting with energy, fun and passion. It begins with Ray and the band in full flight. The guitars are restrained for the first verse allowing the melody to become the focal point. It’s a simple yet effective and hooky verse line aided by Ray’s introspective lyric and the continual push of the instrumentation, the solid pulse of the rhythm section. The verse segues into the first chorus when the guitars return and layers of rich backing vocals thicken up the wonderfully playful chorus melody.
There is a sing-along aspect here too which is just what you want from a rousing country song, even one containing the earnest subject matter of this song; a meditation on time, possibly regret and the realignment of personal focus. The following verse continues along the same path and then another chorus arrives. The arrangement is uncluttered, as it veers from the two main parts but is then refreshed by a bridge section. In this section the rhythmic feel is cut in half, perhaps reflecting the wistfulness, poignancy of the lyric, but it soon changes into the main feel once more and a suitably fiery guitar solo.
A break-down chorus follows and is the perfect segue allowing for the slight swagger in Ray’s voice to emerge, for the heartfelt and good-natured cadences to shine. Wasting Time is the right song to introduce the next phase of Ray Ryder’s expanding musical trajectory, which is sure to be significant.