Kassi Valazza
Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing
Loose/Fluff & Gravy
26 May 2023
Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing is a totally captivating album; voice, lyrics and melodies will draw you into its embrace, and you won’t want it to let you go.
Raised in Arizona and now based in Portland, Kassi Valazza released her debut album four years ago, following it up with a download EP. Now, snapped up by the prestigious indie, she returns for a hugely impressive follow-up that, while presented through a modern Southwestern American contemporary lens, calls to mind the likes of Emmylou, Joni, The Band and 60s Laurel Canyon folk.
Backed by Portland outfit TK & the Holy Know-Nothings (hence the title), the album opens with the wearied sway and a subtle hint of early Dylan on Room In The City, organ and harmonica behind the high lonesome vocals as she sings of life on the road (“I’ve been out on the road drinking coffee/In every truck stop and every same little town /I watch the clouds disappear cause they’re embarrassed/By the blue that follow them around”) and missing those left behind (“I stop to wonder what you’re doing/Are you sitting on your porch singing songs/About the dreams that you had while you were sleeping/How I wish that I was sleeping in your arms”).
It’s a captivating start, and she keeps the ball rolling with the easy-rolling rhythm of the folksy fingerpicked acoustic Rapture with its pianet, soft percussion and bells as she draws on the imagery of heat and cold to reflect on a connection years down the line (“Come some lonely evening when these embers go leaving/Me bitter and cold/We’ll watch our bodies grow old, you’ll hear me whisper you were right/You’ll laugh at my sorrow so empty and hollow I was such a fool/That I knew better than you/Making up all those rules”), with the poetic “you’ve been lighting your way with the pages you burn/While others read theirs first, see how bright you can shine” and the earworm chorus “You don’t know how fire works/It burns too slow you’ll lose it/You don’t know how fire works/It dies until you feed it”.
Visiting a troubled relationship that’s hard to let go of (“My friends though they wonder what I’m used to/To love a man who never treats me right/I tried to take the time to love another/Just a friend that I could cling to tight/His eyes they spoke with hunger and devotion/But they’re not the eyes in the corner of my mind”), the previously mentioned Corners with its 12 string acoustic and pedal steel has her vocals pitched somewhere between Harris and Ronstadt.
The quality doesn’t let up, as, conjuring early Joni Mitchell, Sandy Denny and Tim Buckley, the six-minute Watching Planes Go By shimmers with a late 60s psychedelic folk haze as she sketches how “Michael blames his broken foot on lost time/Sitting by the window watching planes go by”, reflecting on the passing of time as “Rock n’ roll pours out the radio, taking shape of sunken hills and UFOs”, a narcotic electric guitar solo conjuring desert head trips.
Featuring pedal steel, cornet and trumpet, Song for a Season is another excursion of dreamy folksy colours, again drawing on the imagery of the shifting seasons and nature as motifs for love and longing (“Where you been to?/Said the cold covered ground/Nature’s growing without my knowing/I’d like to be somebody else”) as well as touches of mysticism (“Only visible to you/Their silver bow strings play songs of old kings /And they play in the light of the moon”). The mood remains subdued for faint colours of The Band in the faltering waltzing Long Way From Home (I’ll Ride You Down) that again returns to trying to make a troubled relationship work (“You asked for a tree whose roots wouldn’t grow/So I drag my feet heavy across your floor”) with its heartbreaking line “I’d rather be lonely than on my own”.
Following a muted introduction, the rhythmically pulsing Canyon Lines sketches a picture of a woman who works for the highways department (“and she doesn’t seem to mind/That the road all around is filled with debris/Empty cans cigarettes/she laughs alone at what she sees”), that, the road a metaphor for her face, becomes a snapshot of ageing and being worn down (“She lost a bet down at the roadhouse/she said her face holds canyon lines/Wearing down all the Whiteness in her teeth/But she’s smoking cigarettes and she’s broke as she can be”) but with the beams of passing cars somehow bringing a sense of grace and hope (“She says the rhythm of the headlights bouncing off those concrete walls creates a light in the spaces too dark to see”) and the line “What do they know?”, a note of defiance.
Opening with Telecaster twang, the slow fuzzy sway Smile hits the honky tonks, turning the tried and tested tale of lost love into an act of acceptance and owning of mistakes made (“I guess I could have left the light on/Or stayed awake to see you home …I let the silence come between us/And I let my pride take its place ”), of self-realisation (“I fare better on my own …I was struggling to walk a straight line/When I met you months ago/I thought by now I’d be much better/At being loved and letting go”) and putting on a brave face (“With your note stuffed in my pocket/A smile spread across my face/I pretend it doesn’t matter/When I read that you won’t stay”).
The last of the self-penned numbers comes with Welcome Song, another in the 60s psych-folk style, with its stream-of-consciousness lyrics about a relationship that’s frayed and broke, the narrator faking sleep as she sings, “Outside the door your feet were found/I didn’t move or make a sound/I’ll cover up your welcome song/Drown it out completely/And sure as hell you’ll see me run /On feet thought to be forgiving”, exhausted from the effort of trying (“All that you give/It leaves you so tired”) as the song fades away on a Wurlitzer and electric guitar blues jam.
The album closes with a warmingly melancholic cover of Michael Hurley’s Wildegeeses, acoustic and electric guitars coloured with fiddle, complementing her own nature imagery and themes of the changing cycles of seasons and the heart, a lovely curtain call to an album with a voice, lyrics and melodies that draw you into its embrace and you won’t want it to let you go. Ignore the title for Kassi Valazza knows a great deal.
Order Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing via Bandcamp