Cel Ray – Teen (Cult) Song

The rent keeps going up. The cost of living is too damn high. What if everyone moves to the middle of nowhere and we can all hang out? Cel Ray are wondering this very thing on their latest single, “Teen (Cult) Song,” which is out today with an amazing music video directed by Katelyn Douglass.

This is the third single from the band’s upcoming album, Cel Rayzer, due out July 24th via Exploding In Sound Records, an album that jitters with punk exuberance, a rattled sense of humor, big nasty riffs, and rhythms that pound with art punk and hardcore dexterity. It’s the perfect record for a sizzling summer, refreshing and delightfully askew.

Recorded together with Doug Malone at Jamdek, Cel Ray rip through ten charismatic punk tunes with hardcore velocity. The riffs are huge and melodic, the drums are pounding, and vocalist Maddie Daviss’ dynamic presence as one of punk music’s most radiant front people is undeniable. With lyrics that are simultaneously political and comedic, Daviss proves you can make a point and still have a great time in the process. Grab your swim trunks, Cel Ray summer is here.

Speaking about “Teen (Cult) Song,” Daviss shared, “When I first heard this song the boys had written I thought it was something they would play at the Bait Shop, the fictional pier-side rock club frequented by the teens on The OC which I was rewatching at the time, hence “Teen Song”. But! The song is about how we all rent these apartments in the city and make our art and work our jobs, but the rent keeps going up. I know myself and many other people have fantasized about ‘everyone’ moving to some random place in the country where we could all afford homes and land and grow food and make art and retain our own culture because we are all doing it together, which sounds like a cult. But also like a big beautiful teenage style life dream.”

Absurdity and punk rock go together like celery and tonic water. That is to say, they are two acquired tastes that are even better together, because they push out the squares and cater to the real freaks. That spirit has driven Chicago’s Cel Ray from the very beginning. Springing to life with their debut EP Cellular Raymond in 2023, the Chicago four-piece of vocalist Maddie Daviss, guitarist Josh Rodin, bassist Kevin Goggin, and drummer Alex Watson charted a path through twitchy, absurdist post-punk that fell somewhere between The Minneapolis Uranium Club and The B-52s. Piss Park followed later that year, and aside from the “Raw God” single in 2025, the band spent their time ripping club shows across the Midwest, playing in DIY spots, dive bars, and, one time, being hand-selected to open for Jack White.

Now, after years of waiting for a proper full-length, Cel Ray has joined the illustrious noisenicks at Exploding In Sound to release Cel Rayzer, a record that, as its name subtly implies, is sharper and more acerbic than anything Cel Ray’s done before. This is, in part, to the band taking a more collaborative approach to writing than they had on their early EPs. As Daviss tells it, “Cel Rayzer was written at practice and in the studio together.” The studio in question was Chicago’s Jamdek Recording Co. where Doug Malone helped capture the band exactly as they are.

And what they are is even more tightly wound and focused, as opener “Gotta Get Away” displays in mere seconds. The band starts in familiar territory with Goggin’s melodic, propulsive bass line locking in with Watson metronomic drums, but once Rodin’s guitar kicks in alongside a supercharged Daviss, the band feels far heftier than ever before. Gone are the nervous jitters, the kind triggered by a simple coffee rush, replaced with high-powered truck stop speed, the kind that gets you so hopped up you can see through the very fabric of time itself. Lyrically, Daviss expounds on the feeling of winter’s stifling grasp, one that follows you indoors and pervades your entire being. “The song was conceived in winter, when I felt very stuck in my home, work, and routines,” says Daviss. “I get too depressed in a way that makes me feel incapable of planning anything, like the grass could always be greener on the other side, but you’re too down and anxious to even investigate the other grass.”

But no part of Cel Rayzer is morose. All that introversion and intrusive thinking ends up informing the whole of Cel Rayzer. “The album’s really about the frenzy and detritus of the modern world,” says Daviss. “Price of Gas” is an incisive bit of theatrics from Daviss, as she inhibits the spirit of someone who—actually, it’s better if Daviss tells it: “This song is a rock opera from the perspective of an American man who is obsessed with the price of gas. He has bottled all his troubles and resentments at the country into the rising gas prices, and how they are keeping him down. He desperately wants to impress his wife, provide for his family, and be behind the wheel constantly, but the cost of living keeps rising without him. He blames the price of gas and his wife for his unlucky lot in life to the point of madness, never seeing the bigger picture.”

This type of guy is someone we all know some version of, and it’s a perfect blend of Mark Mothersbaugh and Jello Biafra, a look into the psyche of someone so preoccupied, paranoid, and distinctly American, that you can’t help but get a sense that there’s thousands of Gas Guys lurking all around you at any given time. On the narrative flipside, Cel Ray ponders the feelings of trash and its assorted receptacles from the point of view of freedom instead of consumerist failings. “What a pleasant existence trash must have, just being put all over the place without a thought. How many secrets trash knows? So much good trash out there. So much waste, it’s tragic,” says Daviss. The song’s rollicking conclusion boasts a ripping guitar solo from Rodin, sounding like a soda bottle run over in traffic and rocketing straight up into the sky.

What makes Cel Rayzer so impactful is the inability to pin it down. Yes, it’s garage punk; yes it’s egg-punk; yes it’s post-punk, but it’s beholden to none of those things. The closing track, “Treat Economy,” is a trenchant critique of a reliance on sweets and snacks as stand-ins for genuine salves, and it features a breakdown so heavy that, in the right setting, might get kids in camo pants to throw a spinkick. “Snake’s Maw,” the album’s centerpiece, is a song that literally dials down the speed but shows that Cel Ray retains their power even when they allow themselves the room to stretch out. It highlights how dexterous each member is, able to completely subvert what the listener expects while still sounding exactly like Cel Ray.

This is what makes Cel Rayzer such a thrill; Just when you think you have the band figured out, they transform into something else so effortlessly, you’re left wondering how they even pulled it off.

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