Fucking Bliss

American Pleasure Club is a pop band from Baltimore, MD. Founded under the name ‘Teen Suicide’, they opted to change in 2016, finalizing the switch on Christmas, 2017 with the release of their album ‘I blew on a dandelion & the whole world disappeared’. Functioning similarly to an art collective, rather than a traditional rock group, the only definite band member is singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist/composer Sam Ray, who writes & arranges all of the band’s music, and lyrics, as well as doing the bulk of the recording & mixing. While having worked & functioned as a proper, traditional ‘rock band’ in the past, the group was founded by Sam Ray as a solo endeavor, and the newest record ‘fucking bliss’ returns them once again to that setup, as Ray is the only person who wrote for the album, recorded for the album, etc. Considering this, it’s not surprising then that the album is so intensely personal, not just in its themes & lyrics, but the music & sound as well. Ray has called the album a ‘deconstructed pop record’ – and ‘music deconstructed & broken down’ – citing the works of French author, photographer, and essayist Eduoard Levé, in particular his posthumous book ‘Suicide’, as well as Jacques Derrida’s difference and its application well beyond literature as big influences on the album’s theme & concept.