Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band

Information

Pop Mutations & Freakender present:
Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band

• Special Guests
  Saturday 6th September
  The Flying Duck
  18+

At the frayed bottom-edge of Indiana – just a moderate bike ride north of Louisville, Kentucky – multi-instrumentalist, artist and songwriter Ryan Davis’ Americana-noir soundwaves have been emanating for years in a myriad of forms. But not until late-2023's rich and glowing double-disc Dancing On The Edge, the debut breakout release as Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, was his creative presence so widely acknowledged by press, fellow contemporaries and fans alike, commonly deeming the record an instant classic of idiosyncratic American songwriting greatness. Spring 2025's UK/Ireland tour gave Ryan and band the platform to affirm speculation with a series of intensely passionate shows –– founder/author of UNCUT Allan Jones citing the band's Kilkenny Roots Festival show as 'intense, amazing, an emotional exorcism with lyrics unfolding like a fever dream'.

May 7 this year saw the announcement of their second album New Threats From The Soul and with it the release of a titular single that was immediately pinned as 'Best New Track' by Pitchfork, Jeremy Larson stating '[the song] feels like a dam break, a flood of sublime, witty, and dryly devastating lyrics that count among some of the best I've heard this decade'. As Ryan's fellow Louisville contemporary Nathan Salsburg muses – the new album reckons mightily with the perplexities of human efficacy and agency in an absurd and debased world. This probably sounds hopelessly plodding and severe. It is not—not remotely. It’s a shit-ton of fun. The songs are all earwigs; the arrangements genuinely thrilling, enlivening efforts by the crackerjacks that comprise the sprawling Roadhouse Band. Each trip through the record reveals more of the depth and breadth and tangle of its tapestry. New Threats From The Soul is a masterclass in reducing the sublime to the prosaic, immensity to infinitesimally, and vice versa [the trick can only work both ways].

With the new full-length slotted for July 25th via Tough Love [UK/EU] and Sophomore Lounge [USA] backed by main stage appearances at UK's End of the Road and Moseley Folk & Arts Festival, more support shows with MJ Lenderman and a staggering 30-something date UK/EU tour this August and September, this dense sharing of Davis' canon is set to further connect a worldwide audience at rapid pace, his lyrical craftsmanship arresting listeners with its playful sincerity and surrealistic view of a broken planet backed by a group of skilled players that are as musically woven into the cloth of the songs as the writer himself is their words.

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band: You will not soon forget this name.