Valley are quickly becoming one of the most prolific and most popular bands making music right now. Their personal and inventive brand of indie pop has seen them rise through the ranks of the greats - like Bad Suns, HUNNY, and COIN - with their debut EP, This Room Is White, and their first full-length MAYBE (both self-produced) ammassing them nearly 38 million streams on Spotify since the band's conception in 2016. Their listeners are growing up alongside them and actively experience everything they sing about, and I, personally, believe that's what makes them so widely- and well-loved.
"nevermind" is a masterful portrayal of the ease with which symptoms of mental illness slip in and out of your life. Specifically, it's about perfectionism, and the ways in which it can manifest itself negatively - feeling so overwhelmed by all of the things you have to do and wanting to do all of them so well that you just decide not to do any of them. Who can't relate to that? You feel like your pessimism is a part of yourself and like there's nothing you can do to rid yourself of it, so you might as well learn to live with it. When you settle into bouts of depression, you become one with it, and you let yourself push everyone you love away, and valley have done an impeccible job of making this feeling physical, tangible, understandable to those that don't deal with it.
In the bridge before the last chorus, they sing, "I wanna live in a 90s movie / Where things just happen so easy / Sometimes I want things decided for my mind, my mind"; when you want to be able to do something perfectly, it's almost like you're willing to wish away parts of your life to be able to achieve that. I often find myself saying, "I wish I could fall asleep one day and wake up ten years from now, when I'm successful and happy and living out my dream," but the thing with thinking like that is the best parts of life are the lived-in ones, the ones you don't expect to fulfill you but do. You don't want to be alone, but you refuse to settle for anything less than your soulmate. We've all been there, in one way or another. The emotion that valley have domesticated - made digestible, comprehensible - is a universally-experienced one, especially among young people, who are coming to terms with the fact that their lives might not turn out the way they intended them to, but it's also not talked about enough. Thank god someone has decided it's necessary.
valley's newest release is something to behold. "nevermind" can be streamed on the platform of your choosing. They'll be performing an acoustic version of "nevermind" for Aesthetic Magazine's Aesthetic Festival on July 18th. They can also be found on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
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