Rachael & Vilray with Megan Burtt

‘Rachael & Vilray’ has been a musical act ever since Rachael saw me play a very short set of covers and said she wanted in. Her voice is singular, agile, beautiful, and, as I found when we started performing original music, the most rewarding instrument to write for. In the seven years since we began, our configuration has ranged from an intimate duo, to the 9-piece formation you hear on six of these tracks. No matter the set-up on stage, my friend Rachael and I sing right to each other, tell stories about how the songs came to be, and relate them to the many old love songs we love to love.

Eleven of these songs are my own, and I’ll say a bit about the thrill of writing in this style. I love stories told by characters. The era’s repertoire is rooted in songs for theater and films, so a lot are written in the first person and from the perspective of a dramatis persona, rather than reflecting an omniscient narrator or the writer themself. I also love how the music of language is explored in this idiom. Three-in-one singer-lyricist-composers of the time — like Johnny Mercer or Peggy Lee — made clever use of slant rhymes and dense consonant combinations to propel the rhythm of their music. Their songs “ac-cent-tchu-ate” the chaotic and amusing ways that syllables run together, and how the mouth dances to put them across. Like Johnny and Peg, I love to write songs about feelings that feel good to sing.

– VILRAY, New York City, Summer 2022