Valet

What up, fellas. Jeff “Forty” Fortson’s comment about “What’s with all the goddamn bleep bleep bloop bleep bullshit! Isn’t there a good all American verse-chorus-verse rock band?” has been haunting me, and I wanted my next post to be “Here’s your #1 rock band, motherfucker… BLAOWHH!”

But, unfortunately, perusing the iPhone, I got nothing in the old verse-chorus-verse department, and to the contrary the best thing I’ve gotten in a long, long time is on the other end of the spectrum.

My man Hurewitz (or should I call him “Rootless”? Are we only using blog code names here?) gave me a CD by this band “Valet” called “Naked Acid”. They (she?) is from Portland, Or and i guess that whole scene.

For me, personally, where I’m at with music, it could not be more spot on. Hahaha, Hurewitz actually said when he gave it to me “this is almost unfair… this is like a parody of DC’s favorite band”.

Equal parts ambient noise, weird sounds (but very organic, not harsh electronic noises), samples and loops of weird percussion, esoteric 80’s synths, wah wah guitars, tons of delay. Female vocals reminiscent of Christina Carter of Charalambides, if you are hip to that. Real mellow, but a few jams that rock. Real super sloppy guitar solos, like guitar solos on a Beck album that are almost comically bad, but fit in perfectly with the rest of the music… like, how could this part NOT be included? At times sounds like Brian Eno/John Hassell “Fourth Worlds”. All really guitar-based, which keeps it from being super freak out. Really, on scale of 1 to 10 of weirdness it’s only like a 6 or 7. Has a real lo-fi, 4-tracky feel to it, which I always like. And check the fucking cover artwork. Slam dunk.

This is absolutely the best thing I’ve gotten in a long time. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION if anything written above sparks any interest.

Fortson, I’ll find a rock band for the next post.

dc