Review & Video Premiere: Valley of the Sun, The Chariot
[Click play above to stream the premiere of Valley of the Sun’s ‘Devil I’ve Become.’ Album preorders here for North America and here for Europe.]
Ohio heavy rockers Valley of the Sun will release their new album, The Chariot, on June 17 through Ripple Music and Fuzzorama Records. It is the Cincinnati-based four-piece’s second album for Fuzzorama, first for Ripple and fourth overall behind 2019’s Old Gods (review here), and it finds guitarist/vocalist Ryan Ferrier the lone remaining original member of the band with the acquisition of new drummer Lex Vegas. Bassist/keyboardist Chris Sweeney and guitarist Josh Pilot both played on the last record, but at 12 years remove from their debut EP, Two Thousand Ten, their time as a band has always been marked by lineup changes.
What makes their run to-date all the more impressive is their consistency in the character of their songwriting. The Chariot — which may or may not be named after a car; I’m leaning yes — continues a tradition for Valley of the Sun that goes back to their very beginnings in that first EP and 2011’s The Sayings of the Seers (review here, discussed here), which is it brings together a collection of ace tracks, constructed with care and passion both, energetically delivered with a mind toward live energy but a crisp, and all-pro-style recording sound. They begin using the according depth of their production immediately — the literal first seconds of opener “Sweet Sands” — as some particularly Hendrixian wah guitar leads the way into the first smoothly layered hook of the many to come.
Every song has something. That’s not saying The Chariot doesn’t have a flow from one song to the next — the shift from “Headlights” to “As We Decay” argues otherwise on linear formats — but from that initial guitar lick in “Sweet Sands” through the thudding drum part in the break and under the solo of “Images” to the stamping snare and insert-that-when-they-play-the-riff-slower-meme-here slowdown in the initially careening “Devil I’ve Become” (video premiering below), the post-midpoint comedown and build back up of “The Chariot,” the semi-psychedelic guitar at the end of “Headlights” that makes the aforementioned transition to “As We Decay,” which is a ballad complete with what may be slide guitar.
And if you’re listening on vinyl, that song begins side B with no flinch in purpose, with backing from the quieter buildup and Queens of the Stone Age-style backing vocals of “Running Out of Love,” the organ on the messy divorce story “Sunblind,” the flourish of cowbell here and there in the penultimate we’re-going-to-do-Def–Leppard-but-heavy “The Flood” and the layered melodies and non-lyric vocals in “Colosseum,” which also rounds out The Chariot with a riff that’s about as signature as it gets for Valley of the Sun.
None of this is to say that the band or Ferrier as the presumed principal songwriter is shooting for novelty. Rather, it is emblematic of the care Valley of the Sun have always put into their work that each successive cut on their fourth album should have to justify its existence to them. Each Valley of the Sun album, from 2014’s Electric Talons of the Thunderhawk (review here) to 2016’s Volume Rock (review here) to Old Gods to The Chariot has been a step forward from the last.
The same can be heard in the arrangement and treatment on Ferrier‘s vocals, which take full advantage of his range and ability to change up his delivery from one moment to the next, and even in the additional level of crunch brought into sections like the payoff nod groove of “Devil I’ve Become” or in the bridge between verses on “Sunblind” that is just the kind of sonic detail one has come to expect from the band, adding to the adrenaline at just the right time to emphasize movement.
That physicality is a big part of the momentum that The Chariot builds — even the title itself implies going somewhere, and the somewhat escapist lyrics back that up — as “Sweet Sands” and “Images” both roll out at a comfortable pace before they kick into the speedier beginning of “Devil I’ve Become.” At the start of side B, when “As We Decay” goes quiet ahead of the Brant Bjork-strum that begins “Running Out of Love,” the sound is gentler but no less considered, and that applies to side B’s own centerpiece-as-tempo-burst “Sunblind” as well.
All of this drives home the point that Valley of the Sun know what they’re doing. They know the heavy rock band they are and the band they want to be, and when “Colosseum” ends solid, they know that they’re ending the set at the show they just put on. It’s not about leaving in or taking out mistakes in songs — I’m sure there are flubs here and there that the band would have no trouble pointing out if asked; those kinds of things are crucial — but about capturing the electricity in the conversation that is the performance of the players involved, and on The Chariot, balancing that with as lush and far-reaching a production value as Valley of the Sun have ever had. There’s a restlessness behind them — fair, considering the era — but the care that’s taken in presenting this material isn’t to be understated or devalued.
It stands as further evidence that Valley of the Sun are veterans at this point. Their intention to take their favorite classic heavy rock, make it theirs, and give it to their audience could not be plainer. If they’re hiding anything from the listener, they’ve hidden it well, and though on first listen some of what they do might seem easy — they are and always have been an easy band to listen to — or maybe just straightforward on its surface with seven or eight of the 10 songs in the four-minute range, as deep as you want to go in hearing it, The Chariot will meet you there. And better, it’ll bring hooks too. Valley of the Sun know their sound, know that much of their listenership knows their sound, and still keep finding new things to make it do while delivering on the promise of their prior work. It is what you would hope a fourth album to be. It puts the songs first.
