KASSI VALAZZA - Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing (Fluff and Gravy)
Add Date: 5/23/2023
Release Date: 5/26/2023
FCC: Clean
Focus Tracks: Smile, Corners, Watching Planes
Formats: Non-Comm AAA, AMA, Folk, Submodern, NACC Top 200
RIYL: Esther Rose, Bella White, Margo Cilker
Portland, Oregon-based artist Kassi Valazza is set to release her sophomore full-length, Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing, on May 26 via Fluff & Gravy Records (Margo Cilker, Anna Tivel) in North America and Loose Music (Andrew Combs, Courtney Marie Andrews) in the UK. Valazza has announced an extensive U.S. tour to showcase the new songs with album release shows in Seattle, Washington (Sunset Tavern on May 25) and Portland, Oregon (Mississippi Studios on May 27). Full tour details below.
Holler premiered a music video for the album’s third single, “Smile,” exclaiming, “If you're a fan of Esther Rose, Sierra Ferrell or Bella White and you don't know Kassi Valazza yet, you are about to lose your shit!” “Smile” opens with a familiar telecaster honky-tonk squawk and a half-time trot, but in Valazza's careful hands, the typical bar-room tale of lost love becomes an ode to self-realization. “It’s that feeling of acceptance when love isn’t enough,” Valazza offers, “finding comfort in a life spent alone." “Smile” will arrive on all streaming services tomorrow, April 14.
News of the new record arrived earlier this year with lead single "Watching Planes Go By as the opening track on UNCUT’s Sounds of the New West Vol 6 disc, which sees Valazza leading a list of breakout roots acts including Allison Russell, Nikki Lane, Sunny War, Margo Cilker, Plains, and more. Within a curious and cosmic atmosphere of psychedelic folk-rock that UNCUT calls a “slow-burning mix of Americana and Paisley Underground psych,” Valazza reflects on the dangers of standing still in life, "Autumn leaves turn to yellow / and green turns to jealousy / Watching days go by."
The album’s second single, “Corners,” recently premiered at Brooklyn Vegan who called it “a twangy ballad taking influence from '70s Americana and gentle, folky psychedelia.” Throughout the track, fingerpicked acoustic guitar dances with bounding bass and twinkling piano, as a gentle backing choir flows behind Valazza like a stream through a lonesome vista. “The clouds move slower than they ever seemed to / Still, they find a way to pass me by,” she sings on her breezy lament about the longing that comes with an unhealthy love, “My friends, though, they wonder what I’m used to / To love a man who never treats me right.”
Of recording the 10-song set, Valazza offers, "On this album, everything was recorded live, all the vocals and instrumentation. We recorded in a room together with [fellow Portland-based band] TK & The Holy Know-Nothings, who hadn't heard any of the songs before we went into the studio. You're rarely going to find a songwriter that writes and composes every single song; it's a combination of people working things out together, of what I want and what the band hears. When people don't know the songs, it’s a lot looser and more magic can happen. You don't overthink it.”
Valazza’s songs manage to capture the romanticism of country crooners with the intuition of a realist poet. Her gutsy and graceful poetry is backed by swirling Western psychedelia as she explores themes of love and longing through metaphors from the natural world. Though the music plays country cousin to British folk, calling to mind greats like Sandy Denny (Fairport Convention) and Karen Dalton, a Southwestern American streak carves its way through these solemn, sweetly sung melodies like a canyon.
Valazza has inspired a cult-like fascination since the self-release of her 2019 debut album Dear Dead Days, which she followed with a surprise digital EP called Highway Sounds last year. She is seated squarely at the vanguard of new American songwriters strengthening and broadening the sound of country and western, both bearing the torch and bending the arc of roots music.
‘Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing’ will release on May 26, 2023 via Fluff & Gravy Records.