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Coca-Cola stage reviews: Valley
By Ansharah Shakil, July 22 2024—
The formation of Toronto-based indie-pop band Valley was rooted in accident: the four members met by chance, double-booked for the same studio in 2013. They’ve toured Calgary before, as a special guest with Dermot Kennedy last October, and they returned on July 9 to open for Chelsea Cutler and The Beaches at the Coca-Cola stage for the Calgary Stampede.
This won’t be Valley’s last appearance with The Beaches — they’ll be joining the latter again in August. They expressed their appreciation for both Chelsea Cutler and The Beaches within moments of stepping on stage. A good opening act is one that captures your attention even if you don’t know any of the music, something Valley mastered within a few minutes of their performance. Their music hooks you in, only to turn the script around with moments of surprise, and always with an obvious level of care and dedication to their sound.
Their set began with “Water the Flowers, Pray for a Garden”, a single that’s the epitome of Valley’s raw, honest lyricism. It’s one of the first songs the band has released as a trio. Guitarist Michael Brandolino recently departed the band to focus on a career in producing music, leaving Valley to now be composed of lead vocalist Rob Laska, bassist Alex Dimauro and drummer Karah James.
Laska is the kind of performer you can’t look away from, charming in an endearing sort of way whether he was grinning at the audience, strumming at his guitar or performing hand movements to go along with each lyric. The easy charisma of all the band members and the evident chemistry between them meant each moment of the set brought each song to life.
Valley followed up “Water the Flowers, Pray for a Garden” with the melancholy, immediately catchy “Have a Good Summer Without Me”, which preceded “Lost in Translation”, its soaring synths at odds with authentic, messy lyrics. But in “Break for You”, the band hit their stride. “Break for You” is already one of the standouts from Valley’s 2024 album Lost in Translation. Live, it’s an entirely new and astonishing achievement, Laska’s falsetto ringing out sharp and clear on the chorus.
2019’s MAYBE was the first Valley album I ever loved, and years later, it still holds up. Valley performed a few MAYBE songs for their Stampede set, including “A Phone Call in Amsterdam.” “A Phone Call in Amsterdam” is one of the best tracks off of MAYBE, simple in its sincerity and reconciliation of hope and despair.
Followed by “A Phone Call in Amsterdam” was MAYBE’s “Park Bench”, a swinging, vulnerable track that starts off slow before the instruments pick up in a rush of exhilaration two minutes in. Laska drove that exhilaration even higher live, lowering himself to the floor during the post-chorus before leaping up to sing with a muted ferocity, changing “I’m just currency” to “I’m just motherfucking currency”, each word delivered staccato.
Laska introduced the next song (“sucks to see you doing better”) as being about being lonely and stuck and working late for little pay, a speech that had the audience cheering. James was incredible on the drums for the entire set, but on “sucks to see you doing better” she leaned in to provide stunning backing vocals. Of all of Valley’s songs, the vibrant production of “sucks to see you doing better” demands to have its lyrics screamed out loud. It captures the kind of mood everyone gets into at least once in their life, all self-pitying and achingly bitter before you pick yourself up and keep moving anyway.
On July 12, Valley released their latest addictive single “Bass Player’s Brother”, but on the Coca-Cola stage they performed the unreleased song for their Calgary audience. With lyrics of sharply observed detail (“Slick hands like butter / He had a buzz cut / August of ’90 / She was a box-dyed blonde in a pipe dream”) and a gloriously crooning, snappy, drum-driven chorus, “Bass Player’s Brother” is an inspired, new step forward for Valley. So is their other recent single “When You Know Someone”. A passionate, bittersweet song that tugs at the heart-strings, it had Laska dancing along with Dimauro to James’s harmonica intro at the beginning before coming back to the mic for the first lyrics.
Before ending their set with “hiccup”, the band performed “There’s Still a Light in the House”, a lovely standout from MAYBE with its chiming production and perfectly contained bridge. Laska sang “I’d like to call you on the way home / Another precious call to waste on my mouth / My chance is tugging me by the shoulder / But there’s no one home to let you in or let me out”, before leaving a deliberate pause for the audience to fill in the next line of “There’s still a light in the house.” During “hiccup”, he pointed joyfully over to James for her solo and had the audience learn and sing the line “I wanna know what you’re doing tonight.”
By the time Valley left the stage, Laska throwing his guitar pick into the crowd and James tossing one of her drumsticks to a lucky audience member, they were already missed. I would have listened to another hour, but the setlist was the perfect introduction to anyone new to their music. Every song takes on a completely new feeling listening to the studio version after watching them perform. Even as you’re left with a sense of absolute peace, you can’t unhear the bright, jubilant spark that defined their live sound.
If you missed Valley at the Stampede, they’ll be returning to Calgary this October to perform at Mac Hall. Their latest album, Water the Flowers, Pray for a Garden, is set to release August 30th.