biographical info
There's this feeling you get when you have an
intense crush. Your heart keeps pounding, ricocheting off your ribs for
no reason. Randomly, buying milk at the grocery store or riding the
bus, you notice a full-on flock of butterflies trying to escape from
your stomach. Without realizing, you find yourself humming the sappiest
AM radio hits every morning in the shower. Strangers at the coffee shop
comment on the fact that you're grinning like an idiot. Everything
seems so goddamned gorgeous. There are very few things that replicate
that sense of total serotonin-charged exhilaration. Being perfectly
drunk doesn't quite cut it. The only thing that comes even close is a
particular kind of note-perfect, hook-drenched music.
You know
what I'm talking about – imagine Berry Gordy coaching the Marvelettes
through Please Mr. Postman, or Diana Ross and her Supremes
booty-bumping prismatic harmonies in Baby, Where Did Our Love Go? Think
about Sleater-Kinney's exuberant call-and-response yelps as they hiccup
through the pre-chorus of I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone. Let your heart
crack open as Bloc Party's Kele Okereke wails about This Modern Love.
Forget chocolate – the best pop songs are your sole surefire bet for
feeling like you can fall in love again and again and again.
That's why Hunter Valentine is gonna save us all.
When
they first collided, back in the summer of 2004, the Toronto girl-group
threeway composed of brazen singer/guitarist Kiyomi McCloskey, manic
drummer Laura Petracca and classically trained bassist (and
self-proclaimed music geek) Adrienne Lloyd coasted through kicky riffs,
basic rhythms and spitfire lyrics with ease. Like any worthwhile
lasting crush, it took a couple beats for them to secure a stranglehold
around your heart.
Luckily, these girls were committed. They
started busting their asses, scheduling rehearsals more often than most
folks do the dishes. They played show after show, cementing their
reputation as a stellar live band. Chemistry kicked in. Their songs got
better and better. Just over a year later, Hunter Valentine were
specially invited to play the prestigious North By Northeast festival
and the Halifax Pop Explosion. Word got out. Canadian rock god Ian
Blurton tracked them down and came on board to produce a self-titled
demo EP. They shared stages with synth-pop stars like Dragonette and UK
garage-rock breakouts the Duke Spirit. By the summer of 2006, barely
two years after they first formed, Hunter Valentine were ready for the
world to fall in love with them.
That's when hearts really
started getting ignited. Tenacious to begin with, McCloskey, Petracca
and Lloyd decided they were willing to sacrifice pretty much everything
to devote themselves entirely to making the best, most beautiful album
they could. They quit their jobs and gave up their apartments, cruised
down the I-90 to a remote part of Connecticut, where they spent several
months helping bohemian kids realize their true potential at an arty
summer camp (translation: they played music 24 hours a day, till their
guitar- and bass-playing hands developed calluses upon calluses and
overworked muscles spasmed out drum fills in their sleep). They got
really, really good.
By the time the season changed, Hunter Valentine had signed on with High Romance Music, a new imprint of True North Records.
Armed
with a battalion of garage-rock anthems for heartbreakers and the
brokenhearted, they recruited producer Julius Butty, best known for
helping hone the razor-sharp edge on albums by Canuck screamo heroes
Alexisonfire and City and Colour, and headed to the studio to create
what would become their rock-solid, spectacular debut LP, The Impatient
Romantic. Hunter Valentine's shimmering, serrated guitar riffs and
galloping beats echoed off the quiet streets of rural Stoney Creek,
Ontario. They synchronized handclaps over whiskey in backwater bars.
They managed to capture every rapture, every rejection, every moment of
redemption, every hapless last-call bar pickup, every lonely walk home
on a freezing snowy night, every story of a great love gone off the
rails… all of it is on tape.
The Impatient Romantic will knock
you flat on your ass. From the spleen-rattling basslines and singalong
chorus of Typical to the hiccupping tempo of Break This, from the
shimmering intro to Rotting Love Guts to the lip-curled kiss-off of
Jimmy Dean, from the down-on-my-knees pleas of Van City to the sombre
piano chords and hazy fogged-window sighs of album-closer Judy – it's
the triumphant crush you've been waiting for since you were an awkward
dreamer in high school, waiting to fall in love in the locker hallway.
Need context? You can hear echoes of sneering, scratched-melody punks
and rock 'n' roll superheroines like Joan Jett, Chrissie Hynde, Patti
Smith and Linda Perry. You can hear the unabashed heart-on-my-sleeve
harmonies of the Pernice Brothers and the Raveonettes alongside the
stargazing romanticism of Canadian indie rock torchbearers like Stars
and the Arcade Fire. You can hear the meticulous low-end of classic
Motown and the shang-a-lang girl gang attitude of the Shangri-Las.
Prepare yourself for Hunter Valentine: a love like this doesn't happen every day.
lineup
Kiyomi McCloskey lead vocals, guitar
Adrienne Lloyd bass, keyboards
Laura Petracca drums, backing vocals