Valley

Canadian indie-pop band Valley’s latest EP Last Birthday features songs written from the band’s early days in 2014, creating a vast timeline for the EP. 

Consisting of band members Rob Laska, Michael Brandolino, Karah James, and Alex Dimauro, Valley talks about how their writing process was different this time around and the excitement they share to get back on stage. 

“There is a song called “ain’t my girl” that is 7.5 years old and is one of the first songs we ever wrote,” Laska said. “We went through the Dropbox and we were playing all these old songs. This song came on and we were like “Holy crap guys, how did we not put this out?” We had the most existential moment. We thought this had to be on the EP, so we recorded it the next day.”

Other songs from Last Birthday such as “Like 1999,” “Cure,” and “Oh shit, are we in love…?” developed in unique ways as the band was able to collaborate with others all around the world over Zoom. 

“Another unique thing that happened in this era too is usually when we write we have to travel to the place where we collaborate with people. This time we did a lot of it over Zoom,” Brandolino said. “So, our palette was a little wider this time around getting other people’s influences from all over the place. That was the silver lining for us with the pandemic.” 

For Laska, the best advice he has heard is to not convince others to love your music. This advice he heard from the musician Finneas.

“The goal is not to convince someone to love your music because that’s just taste and what people think. You can’t control people’s thoughts. If they can at least admit that they’ve never heard anything like that before, then you’ve won,” Laska said.  

Set to go on a North American tour this fall with COIN and hop back into the festival scene, Valley is excited to connect with fans again. 

“I felt like we weren’t complete without fans or just actual people to play to. We feed off an audience so much and it affects how we perform in such a direct way, that you can’t get with a livestream,” Dimauro said. 

With Last Birthday and the band’s music as a whole, Valley is hoping their music is able to reach others and make them feel something. 

“The real goal is to have a Valley song for every feeling and moment in your life,” Laska said.