At 3 a.m., with sleep nowhere in sight, Ash Ravens reached for his gold top Les Paul and started playing a rhythmic figure over and over until a song took shape around it. By sunrise, “Last Letter from an Alien” was finished. That late night burst of inspiration now opens ‘Letters from an Alien,’ the raw, intimate, and beautifully personal new album from the Ottawa singer, songwriter and guitarist, arriving Oct. 20 on Raven’s Nest Music. Ravens wrote, performed, recorded, mixed, and mastered nearly every note himself, crafting a seven-song collection about being a stranger in the world and finding the way home.
The album grows from a feeling Ravens has carried across three continents. “I’ve felt like an outsider in most rooms for as long as I can remember,” he says. “I’ve lived in Bangladesh, the US, and Australia, and I think part of the reason I keep moving is that I’m searching for the room where that feeling goes quiet. ‘Last Letter from an Alien’ is what came out of that.” The single answers that restless spirit with tenderness and grace, as Ravens sings, “I’m just a wandering soul / Never made to stay long,” before reaching across the cosmos with a promise of connection: “Maybe from another world / I’ll be looking for you too.”
The song came together with remarkable speed. “The riff showed up at 3 a.m. on a night I couldn’t sleep,” Ravens recalls. “I picked up my gold top Les Paul and started playing a rhythmic figure, then played it again, and again.” Two hours later, it was complete. “That’s how I work,” he explains. “I’m methodical, but I don’t get paralyzed by analysis. When a song is there, I finish it.”
That instinct shaped the entire record. Ravens tracked ‘Letters from an Alien’ at his home studio, Raven’s Nest Studios, and played guitars, basses and keyboards, programmed the drums and sang every vocal. “Most of it is drums, guitars, keys, bass, and voice, recorded directly, one take and done,” he says. “I wanted to keep the honesty in the performances, so I kept the arrangements small and didn’t go back and fix things.” Two soft instrumentals built on nylon string guitars and chilled beats glide between the songs, and the credits proudly note that no AI was used at any stage of the music or artwork. The striking cover photo was shot by Shamuna Mizan, whom Ravens thanks in the liner notes as his wife and “loudest cheerleader.”
The album’s most powerful moment of self-discovery arrives on “Save Me,” which grew out of a demanding stretch in which Ravens wrote and recorded three albums and more than 70 songs in three years. “At some point I understood that nobody was coming to save me,” he says. “If it was going to happen, it would have to be me. That’s why the chorus, ‘will you save me, save me from myself,’ is rhetorical. I already knew who the answer was.” It’s also the only song on the album with a vocal recorded outside his home studio, tracked with engineer Dean Watson at Studio Buckingham.
“This one is raw and personal,” Ravens says of the new album. “The lyrics are more intimate and more real, and I didn’t shy away from being open or vulnerable. Underneath it all, it’s about being a stranger, to rooms and to yourself, and working out that you’re the one who has to bring yourself home.”
Ravens is a guitar-driven songwriter who rarely writes the same song twice, moving freely between blues, rock and country-tinged songwriting with anthemic range. After building his career across Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia, he made Ottawa his home and quickly became one of the capital’s most exciting live performers. His albums ‘One Way Ticket,’ ‘Joyride Blues’ and ‘Side A’ have earned him two Capital Music Award nominations, multiple City of Ottawa Arts Grants and a coveted spot at RBC Ottawa Bluesfest in 2023. He has also collaborated with a wonderfully wide circle of artists, including Bif Naked, cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne and Kristine St-Pierre.
Onstage, Ravens treats every audience as part of the band, and inviting fans up to sing with him has become a joyful tradition at his high-energy shows with his band. With ‘Letters from an Alien’ on the way, he’s ready to welcome even more listeners into the room.
‘Letters from an Alien’ Tracklisting:
Last Letter from an Alien
If It Leads Me to You
Daydream Glow
Stay Here in This Quiet
Save Me
Last Letter from an Alien (Extended)
This Unnamed Feeling
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