September 1, 2014

Gemma Ray’s Latest Is Fresh and Unsettling

Steve Gullick/Bronze Rat

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Gemma Ray
Milk for Your Motors
Bronze Rat
A perfect master of noir pop, British-born Gemma Ray turns a familiar recipe—twangy guitars, dreamy melodies, hazy rhythms and wistful voices—into something fresh and more than a little unsettling. Milk for Your Motors transcends artful background music because her songs are smart and unpredictable, encompassing the nostalgic desire of “When I Kissed You” (“I want to remember how I kissed you / ’round the back of the air-raid shelter”) and the gruesome dark comedy of “Waving at Mirrors” (“It was all a terrible mess / Which came from nothing less / Than a moment carelessly spent applying make up instead of driving”) Aching and wry at once, Ray is a mesmerizing presence, mixing brainy cool and genuine passion with precise skill. For added hipster cred, note cameos by Howe Gelb (Giant Sand) and Alan Vega (Suicide), who references his own classic “Dream Baby Dream” on the spooky “Out in the Rain.”

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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