Valley Queen
Supergiant, the 2018 full-length debut from Los Angeles-based band Valley Queen, takes its title from the most massive and luminous yet fastest-burning stars in the universe. Released to massive critical praise, outlets like Rolling Stone, Stereogum, and the LA Times comment on the album’s electric energy. Perhaps Bob Boilen of NPR Music said it best, “Singer Natalie Carol possesses a stunning voice that can rattle the walls and stir the soul.” Valley Queen has shared the stage with Laura Marling, Social Distortion, St. Paul & the Broken Bones, Ruston Kelly, Jonathan Wilson, and many more.
On their upcoming 7” vinyl release Your Red Light/Bad Astrology featuring Cosmo Gold, Carol explains: “‘Your Red Light’ and ‘Bad Astrology’ are a special pairing of songs I’ve co-written with my friend and artist, Emily Gold. Apart from over ten years honing her abilities as a songwriter and fronting her band, Cosmo Gold, her writing ability seems to shine as her birthright, as daughter of the late Andrew Gold who wrote ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ and played alongside legends like Linda Ronstadt, Ringo Starr and Neil Young, to name a few.
Our co-writing started out of texting conversations, sending her bits and pieces I had already written, leaving room for her to top-line over instrumentals, sending me back voice memos of sketches of melodies throughout the day. We texted lyrics back and forth. It was a fun surprise that we created something we liked out of this exchange. I wanted to make recordings that were more collaborative, with artists that surround me that I admire but were not members of my formal band. We had met William Tyler outside of Marfa, Texas, at the Trans-Pecos Festival in fall of last year and I’ve been an admirer of his work tracing back to his time in Silver Jews. Both living in LA, I reached out to him soon after we got back from Marfa to ask him to be a part of it and he came up with the most beautiful guitar arrangements right in the studio.”
When specifically discussing "Your Red Light," Carol comments that it’s “a song about setting a firm and loving boundary,” explaining, “Speaking as much to the self as to the external world, singing it acts as a declaration of who I love but what I will not tolerate.”
