A few weeks back we spoke with Austin Crane, the driving force behind Seattle-based band Valley Maker. The focus of the interview was the band’s debut album, When I Was a Child, which was recently released on Brick Lane Records. Having heard the thoughts of the man himself, I figure it’s time to offer ours too.
If you’re new to the band, just know that Crane lists Will Oldham, Damien Jurado and Jason Molina as key influences, which should tell you all you need to know. ‘Oh Lightning’ opens with floating oooohs and gentle acoustic guitars, before the introduction of Crane’s trademark plaintive vocals, which interweave with those of Amy Godwin. The first of many love songs, the track dives straight into some pretty heartfelt sentiments:
“I cannot break your vision
of a future of light
give me your time
I just want to know you better.
Talking shit
I said I want to be the one you miss
I said I want to be your only friend
I said I want to mean something”
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Next up is ‘By My Side’, another good example of the scope of Valley Maker’s songwriting, a love song which also addresses the potential of an infinite afterlife and a divine deity. The lyrics appear to describe romantic love in the midst of religious love, and the discovery that it’s possible to love another person more than said divine deity, “When the sun lights up your face / don’t give me God don’t give me grace / just give me something that I can taste like you right by my side”.
‘Only Friend’ references growing up in a southern town and living in a foreign land, both hints at the album’s conception, which took place during a time of change and upheaval in Crane’s life as he moved around on various grad studies and travels, taking him to Colorado, Kentucky, Eastern Europe and, ultimately, Washington, the place he now resides. The song also takes aim at some big existential questions, even if it doesn’t offer any answers, “And if it all just goes away/ or if it all decides to stay / I believe my body ends / and I believe you are my friend”. This sense of doubt or unknowing is a key element to the record. As Crane put it in our interview,
The songs do at times wrestle with what can and can’t be known, and try to make peace with that. But the value of music and art for me is to creatively engage that process, not necessarily to arrive at or broadcast the conclusions.
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‘Only Time’ is another love song (“I don’t wanna live, I don’t wanna die without you”), while ‘Something Like Someone’ is slow and solemn, with brushed drums and languidly morose guitar – an exercise in passionate slow burn, eventually flaring towards the end as the percussion gathers intensity and Godwin joins in on vocals. ‘Pretty Little Lifeform’, with its references to evolutionary history and everlasting life, contains one of my favourite lines on the entire album, a sentence which elucidates the nagging feeling that much of Valley Maker’s music gives me. When Crane sings “What is anything for if it’s not to feel and it’s not to need?”, it seems to hint at something that’s increasingly important in our current times. It might sound trite or unoriginally new-agey, but it’s true that in a modern world run by $$$s, individuals are judged primarily by how much money they can make or how many nice things they own or how successful their careers are. People seem to be forgetting how amazing it is to simply exist. The line (and song, and album) acts as a reminder that aspirations should not take ultimate precedence, that sometimes being alive on planet earth, with all these other people, is enough.
‘Take My People Dancing’ is another love song, one which Crane wrote after leaving college and was suffering from all the doubt and uncertainty that comes from that (incidentally, a topic we have mentioned in reviews a few times this year). ‘Another Way Home’ is an acoustic track, while ‘Partial View’ pairs stark guitars with rumbling drums (and is to me reminiscent of a release by another young songwriter which we covered last year). ‘The Mission’ deals explicitly with Crane’s numerous relocations and the consequent personal development, a song about moving on and finding you can be okay:
“I found a new home I found some new friends
I met a good heart I’m learning lessons
I made some teeth marks I cursed some blessing
I miss my parents I miss the mission”
Even though the songs are at the quieter, sadder end of the spectrum, there is a hope inherent in them, most notably on penultimate track ‘Goodness’. A patient build imbued with negative space in the vein of Molina, the song’s second half becomes something akin to an incantation, simultaneously a sincere attempt to summon goodness/kindness/hope and a prayer of thanks for the world and everything in it.
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All that’s left, then, is for ‘When I Was a Child’ to close the album on a sombre note, led by intimate acoustic guitars and Crane’s vocals, with jagged bolts of electric guitar puncturing things every now and then. It is a fitting close, the ache of sadness and hope melding into something intensely personal yet bigger than an individual. All of Valley Maker’s music seems to come back to a similar theme. When I Was a Child is an album about belief and love in a variety of guises, about the big and unknowable questions, from love and growth and family to God and everlasting life. It’s an album about all of us, basically.
You can get When I Was a Child now on CD, LP or download via Brick Lane Records.