Eddy Lee Ryder found herself somewhere between erupting and coming to peace with a turbulent breakup, getting lost in youthful nostalgia, and cracking under the repercussions of climate change on her new EP Blue Hour.
Videos by American Songwriter
Produced by Joshua Sadlier-Brown, Blue Hour is a small vignette into the New York-based singer and songwriter’s recent life and times, living a mostly nomadic life since her debut EP Expected to Fly in 2020.
Combing through two albums worth of material after the catastrophic end of her relationship, five particular songs cemented together for Blue Hour. I kinda feel like sinning / Don’t it seem like we’re all winning tonight / We’re only just beginning / Spent my whole life driving / And the world passed me by croons Ryder on the doo-wop-tipped “Road Dogs.” Revealing more vulnerabilities and the loss of innocence, Ryder pleas to save her rock and roll soul.
Still coiled in her aforementioned relationship, “Holy Sh*t I Think I Love You,” brings to focus a reimagined scenario of her former union. “Hoping to make sense of a breakup, I attempted to write a classic lyric in the style of Paul Simon, but being in a dark place, the lyric came out with a much different tone and with the end reflecting a darker Bonnie & Clyde-esque journey,” said Ryder of “Holy Sh*t I Think I Love You” in a previous statement. “It ended up being a murder ballad I didn’t intend to write, reflecting the delusional brand of love I once had. It wasn’t a story I needed to tell but an emotion I needed to share.”
“Inflatable Lover” is a spellbinding recollection of feeling like a blown-up version of someone’s lover, which segues into the stirring ‘Cold River”— Follow the darkness / Followed him home / Promised me everything, I should have known / Bad memories change when they’re exposed / I left them in shadows where nothing can grow.
Exposing some of Ryder’s darkest fears, from recurring memories and the ramifications of love, Blue Hour takes a final turn around the neglectfulness of nature on closing “Blue Hour”—Sally turned nine and saw blood in the skies.
Recently relocated to Woodstock, New York after moving around the state throughout the past three years, Ryder—who also contributed the song “Smoke and Mirrors” to Damien Leone-helmed horror film Terrifier 2 in 2022—has finally settled on something with Blue Hour, and where she continues on her forthcoming album.
Ryder spoke to American Songwriter about the songs of Blue Hour and her songwriting journey over the past three years, and where the “pendulum” is swinging toward her forthcoming album.
American Songwriter: When did the five tracks for Blue Hour start piecing together for you from Unraveled in 2022? Were some songs a bit older?
Eddy Lee Ryder: Some of them were a little bit older but they were all recorded during the pandemic with my producer [Joshua Sadlier-Brown]. We had such an ultimate pandemic experience, where he moved back in with his in-laws and had set up this makeshift studio in his in-laws’ garage. We would record during the day and he had family dinner every week that I was there, so I would just join his family and his in-laws for dinner. We slowly got the EP together mostly by sitting in his garage.
AS: Within these five tracks, what was it that was tying them together for you?
EDL: The first song on the EP “Road Dogs” is actually the oldest song. It just has a very different mood. I have a really dark sense of humor. People think they’re in for a fun time, and then I’m just going to slowly bring everyone down with these five songs. And then it ends with this climate catastrophe.
AS: And then there’s the title track. Who is Sally in the song?
EDL: I ended up telling a story about this little girl named Sally, and it follows her life. I was on Zoom writing with my friend, and she thought I said Sally turned three in a park in D.C., and I just started the story that way. I told her [Sally’s] story and how she was born into it. It’s about that last little bit of light before it gets completely dark. It’s about enjoying the last bit of climate normal-ness that you can before it gets totally crazy. It’s also about how in society we all become cogs in this machine, and she ends up becoming part of the problem that everyone was trying to shield her from.
AS: You can do an entire album around climate, alone.
EDL: It was funny because all my other songs were breakup songs, and then I was like “I need something to make me feel better. I was like “I know, the climate.”
AS: Then you have songs like “Holy Shit, I Think I Love You” and “Inflatable Lover.” What was going on in your life?
EDL: There was something really crazy going on, and for that reason, the climate emergency was an upgrade. This was a little bit better (laughs). It was more uplifting.
AS: What made you land on the title Blue Hour?
EDL: I think it was the thread of all those songs. I think each song has a little bit of a loss of innocence and a little bit of light in it. The first song was about losing your youth, and then the second song is just about isolation, and finding connection within that isolation. The thread is this little bit of light within all these dark spaces.
AS: When you think back a few years to Expected to Fly (2020 debut), how has songwriting shifted for you within this time?
EDL: I think the pendulum swung a little bit where I was having a lot of fun telling really crazy stories, and then I just went through a lot so the songwriting became pretty serious. Now, I think it’s balanced where I’m somewhere in the middle, where I keep, some zingers in the songs—like “Did she really just go there?”—but I’m still telling real stories. I think I’ve gotten more honest with my experiences rather than just like a one-off of a crazy story.
I’ll get random ideas for songs, and I did do a lot of writing between the EP. There are another 30 or so songs, which I wrote around the same time. This is the first batch of them. There is another album but these didn’t quite fit in the same story or mold. But I love these songs, so I wanted to put them out as a cohesive project.
Afterward, I just needed to decompress a little bit, so I was not writing for a while. I have more fun writing with people around because I can sit around with them and I have my guitar and it’s a way of storytelling. I’m almost like a weird creep in the background where friends are talking and I’ll be playing and listening.
AS: What kind of songs are gravitating towards now for your next release?
EDL: This EP was all about a very turbulent and bad breakup. Then I was like, “I am sick of writing about this person,” so that’s where that pendulum swung back because I’m finding little stories to tell during the day that have nothing to do with this person.
I can sing about timeshares or this crazy old lady I met in town, and other interesting characters. I love telling stories about experiences and characters, so that’s where my writing has been sitting now.
Main Photo: Carl Timpone / Courtesy of One in a Million Media
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.