Interview & Article by Brittany Ormiston

Valley is a note-worthy alternative-pop band who is known for their upbeat songs accompanied by melancholy lyrics. The band wanted to push the envelope and demonstrate their willingness for experimentation by releasing a new track with a blissful, nostalgic feel. “Tempo” was released on July 21st, and has easily become a summer anthem for all listeners. This track paints a clear picture of living in the moment with the one(s) you love and wanting to slow down time to treasure it all even more. Valley will continue to “change the tempo” when they reunite with fans on tour and partake in live music once again. The band will be performing at Wunderbus Festival in Columbus, OH and Bottlerock Festival in Napa Valley, CA at the end of the summer, and then opening for COIN on a 17-date North American tour in the fall.

Today is the day! Tempo release day! How do you guys feel now that it’s out?

Valley: “Really good! The reactions have been way past our beliefs. Regardless of how much we are growing as a band the past year, every time we put out a song it’s kind of nerve-wracking because you just don’t know if people are going to love it or not. The response has been crazy. Everyone has said, ‘This is my new summer bop’ and ‘I needed this [song] this summer’. We’ve been getting a lot of messages. We are really excited because we definitely took a risk with this one. We were experimenting and wanted to do something a bit more dancey and upbeat. There is not a lot of instrumentation happening. Our songs are usually pretty dense, and with this one we were very strict about keeping just the elements and keeping it focused and positive. We are excited that people love it so much.”

The other day you described ‘Tempo’ as “...definitely us breaking ground on what Valley can be and sound like.” Can you expand on that? Did you officially find your sound/discover what direction you want the band to go in?

Valley: “A lot of our music comes from this obsessive idea of happy and sad. I think everyone is. There is nothing more sweet than when you compare a sad lyric to a happy melody or a happy melody to a sad lyric. With this song we were trying to see how far we could push the envelope of not doing that. Can we just write something a little more uplifting and is ironic with itself. That’s where it came from. We actually wrote it over Zoom with this wonderful artist and writer called Soaky Siren. She brought a lot of positive energy to the session. We were pitching sad concepts and any time we did that she would say, ‘Why don’t you flip that? The world doesn’t need that right now. Flip it and make it positive.’ That’s why we love collaborating with other people because they force us to see things through a different lens. We programmed that piano and it became the anchor for the whole song. Karah layed down insane harmonies and layers and we tweaked the lyrics. There’s a crazy bass synth that Alex plays now live. It’s so intense. It’s just fun. It’s us experimenting. I always say it reminds me of Slide by Calvin Harris, that feel and groove. Just us trying something new because it’s fun to keep it interesting. We want to paint with all the colors until there is no more.”

You were talking about collaboration and we saw Josh Gudwin mixed Tempo. He is a well-respected name in the music industry. How was it having him as part of the process?

Valley: “Incredible. I’ve been obsessed with Josh Gudwin for a while because he mixes all the stuff a couple of producers that we really love. He mixed a bunch of the Dua Lipa tracks and a lot of Selena and all of the Justin Bieber songs, all of the pop music that we’re obsessed with. He’s also a producer and a writer as well. This has been a dream of ours for a while. Our team and us reached out to him and he really loved the music and said , ‘I would love to mix this.’ He actually worked on ‘Sucks to See You Doing Better’. He mixed that record. When we got to this song we said ‘This song needs to smack really hard’, and if anyone should mix this song it’s Josh. When we messaged him, we were even smaller than we are now. I consider him an honorary Canadian because he got an email saying ‘This tiny band from Toronto wants you to mix their stuff.’, and he responded and said, ‘I love this music. Yeah let’s do it.’ Definitely an honorary Canadian move in my book.”

What is your creative process? Do you hear a random beat and add lyrics in or do you tend to come up with a lyric and then add the melodies?

Valley: “Every song happens differently. We don’t have a formula or a set creative process. It is chaotic and all over the place which is how we want it to be. If you make it formulaic then you will start to see the same results. When there is a formula to the process, it can hinder how much creativity you are expelling. We overthink quite a bit. We are overthinkers for sure, but when we are writing songs we have thoughts like ‘It’s all good.’, ‘It’s all good when Rob sang it for the first time.’ ‘Don’t touch it. Leave it. Keep it.’ Usually melody and lyrics happen in tandem and it’s never really just melody and just lyrics. Lyrics are tougher because you’re creating a narrative. It’s not typical to create a narrative from top to bottom. I don’t know anyone who does that. It mostly happens in phases and in drafts. You’re going through it and [figure out] this word makes more sense than this one. As you guys know, you have to go through it multiple times over and make sure everything makes sense and there is a storyline. That’s usually how we do it, and obviously if it starts to feel like work then we are doing something wrong. Then we check ourselves and go back to square one and figure out how we are going to continue to create without making it mundane. It can feel like that sometimes when we are doing so much of it, but at the end of the day songs only come out that have hit us in the gut. We don’t put stuff out that we can’t feel or cry to.

Also, for any younger fans or artists listening I’ve started giving this advice out because I have thought about it a lot: the biggest breakthrough for our band was not assigning roles. For the longest time, kids who wanted to start a band or a project would assign roles like ‘the singer will sing the songs’ and then I’ll play my guitar part and then the drummer will add the drum part’. They were cutting their creativity short by doing that. Some of our biggest breakthroughs with songs and with lyrics have been Mickey suggesting a lyric or doing the drum beat or Karah writing the bass line or Alex doing the guitar part. When you don’t assign roles, you are going to have so many more creative breakthroughs. To reference our friends: [The Band] Camino is a great example. They are not locked on roles. Spencer can sing the most heartfelt song as Jeffrey and Garrison can add production. You never want to assign roles to creativity, especially in a band dynamic. That’s what caused our biggest breakthrough as a band and when everything clicked. We have different roles a lot because we aren’t octopuses. When we are in the studio there are no roles. Obviously Karah and Rob will sing the vocals finally but that doesn’t mean that we wrote it. Mickey and Alex could have written the whole verse. Naturally, you fall into what your strongest role is in terms of what you end up contributing the most of, but also there is space to grow because you aren’t necessarily locked to that so you get to dabble in everything. In terms of the dynamic being smooth, people kind of know when to trust the other people because they have seen it work out or not work out.”

We want to tap into your musical inspirations in general and also in relation to ‘Tempo’.

Valley: “For ‘Tempo’ we went into the session referencing Mura Masa. There is a song called ‘Live Like We Are Dancing’ so we referenced that along with ‘Slide’, just upbeat and dance bops. There is almost a split screen to the inspiration thing. Say Fleetwood Mac is Valley’s favorite band because there is a lot of our spirit in that band. But when you listen to our music you don’t necessarily hear Fleetwood Mac. We have career-inspiring bands and then specific artists we pull into our stuff. For example, Coldplay is a career-inspiring band because they’ve managed to be such a generational band and constantly evolve and will consistently sell out arenas for the rest of their lives. Now that is a dream. Do we sound like Coldplay in particular? You hear it somewhere here and there. Other overarching artists [for us] are The 1975, Fleetwood Mac, and pop stars such as Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift. [Those] groundbreaking career artists. Then we have specific artists that inspire specific songs. For ‘Tempo’ definitely artists like Calvin Harris and Mura Masa [inspired it]. ‘Society’ was Smashmouth. It’s hard to say one artist for us because it’s crazy all the time. We are never referencing the same thing. We literally referenced the drum from Lion King once.”

Is there a backstory behind the Michael Jordan reference in ‘Tempo’?

Valley: “We wrote this song right after we came back from an Airbnb for a month where we wrote constantly. While we were at the Airbnb, we watched ‘The Last Dance’ the Michael Jordan documentary and we all got so obsessed with basketball. There was a basketball court next door to our Airbnb and we went out to a store and bought a basketball. Every day we would play basketball and then write songs. Karah broke her finger playing basketball so we should’ve found a way to put that in the song. We talked about having good vibes with somebody you love whether it’s a relationship (romantically or platonically) or family or whatever. Then we came up with the line ‘so pro’ you know ‘the way you move is so pro’. You’re like Michael Jordan: so eloquent, you’re presenting yourself at highest form, to me you’re as iconic as Michael Jordan in 1998 on The Bulls in Chicago. You could have no interest in sports and this documentary could change your life. It’s focused more on life and mental health and there’s so much more to it then just basketball.”

Any reason you’ve referenced Chicago multiple times in your music?

Valley: “Yeah, this is the second time we have shouted out Chicago in our songs. Since Michael Jordan played for Chicago we just connected that, but we like Chicago. We also say ‘that night we had in Chicago’ [in our other song] so it’s a double whammy. Chicago as a city is very much a mix of Toronto and LA together. It’s a really cool city. Every time we reference Chicago in one of our songs the ticket sales go up. I have a feeling the next show in Chicago is going to be really special.”

Also, why Denny’s?

Valley: “With Denny’s, the outro thing was very last minute. The song was ready to go to mixing and one night it was really late and my friend showed me the song called Good Days by SZA. It has this pump and it was in the same key too. I thought I would love to do something like this right now. I started messing around with samples and for some reason with ‘Tempo’ being this upbeat dancey song, I wanted the outro to feel like nighttime. You know when it’s two in the morning and you’ve had a long night out with your friends? You go to the greasiest place just to get food because that’s all that’s open. The outro is the end chapter to a night out for us sonically. We got Karah to say it in the mic and we just kept it. We also have memories at Denny’s. We would go to Denny’s at two in the morning in Niagara Falls. About a month ago, we needed to shoot a music video and afterwards thought ‘We should get food from Denny’s’. We ended up driving 45 minutes to get it. With a song this playful it’s fun to add things like that.”

What are you hoping the fans will take away from this song?

Valley: “Feeling good, bringing joy. That’s pretty much the point of this song. Someone tweeted this yesterday ‘I always get anxious when Valley releases a new song because I never know if I will have a serotonin boost or I’ll need extra therapy.’ This one is to give you a serotonin boost. Escapism is the word. Forgetting the stress of everyday life and having a good time and just living. That’s what this song is about, just living. We wanted a song like this for ourselves too. We have park hangs with our friends and Karah will bring her Bose speaker. We aren’t going to bump sad, existential music. We are bumping dance songs, good vibes. We wanted our fans when they go to a park hang or at a party with their friends to have a Valley song for that moment. Maybe ‘Sucks to See You Doing Better’ isn’t the vibe there and maybe ‘Tempo’ can fit in that playlist now which makes us really happy. Coldplay has ‘Yellow’ but they also have ‘Charlie Brown’ or ‘Something Just Like This’. They have the party bops.”

There are several festivals you will be performing at here soon, and you will be going on tour with COIN in the fall. Do you have any pre-show rituals? Any must-have items on tour?

Valley: “This is our pre-show ritual: ‘cinnamon roll!’. We literally put our hands together and we make a cinnamon roll. It’s hard to explain but your hands fold in a way that creates a cinnamon roll type movement. If we are playing with [The Band] Camino, we guarantee they will knock on our door and they will bring shots so sometimes we will have those. This tour I really want to practice music in the green room before a show because it’s always quiet. We should make a greenroom playlist and have something always playing. A good dinner before a show is good luck too and we have some time to sit together and talk about the show. We can say things like, ‘Last night you did this and that was really cool. You should do it again tonight.’ A shower is nice and when a venue has a good shower I love that. Mike has a thing where he always buys new shoes before shows because he always loses or forgets his shoes at the hotel or at the last venue. The most comfortable, fresh clothes you could wear on stage...and then get them completely ruined with sweat. Meeting fans before shows also gets us so hype. If we walk by a line and if we were given a gift or a letter then that automatically makes us want to go 200% that night.”

Valley

Devin Kennedy