After watching all these bands playing at the FYF fest last weekend, it’s difficult to forget about electronica, as a lot of today’s bands turn to electronics to enhance their sound and performance… But you still find a few musicians who stick to the basics, you know, real instruments, like a simple guitar, a keyboard, a violin, a cello…I had the pleasure of seeing Valley Shine at El Cid yesterday night, and they didn’t need pedals and other equipment to blow the red velvet curtain of the small stage and make people dance as if it was Friday night.
Valley Shine is a large ensemble, a folk sextet with a sweet pop sensibility, and their show was filled with an infectious enthusiasm, that they sure managed to communicate to the crowd in a very short amount of time. Songwriting duo Sam Sobelman and Jenna Blake, respectively on guitar and keyboard (although it varied during the set), were sharing the vocals, while the other musicians, Troy Lawton, Danny Severance, Myke Wilken and Stewart James were providing all the rest of the band’s sonic frenzy, with drums, violin, bass, cello. I first told myself, they could be Mumford and Sons without the banjo? But I spoke too soon because they effectively used a banjo for their last song, ‘To The Sea’.
Many of their dynamic songs, such as their single ‘Sugar Dream’, were light-spirited with multi-harmonies and contagious rhythms, inviting to dance in the same hippie free spirit embodied by bands such as the Polyphonic Spree or Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros before they lost their female singer Jade. Their quiet songs had sensible strings and emotive cello, but were still on the upbeat side, wrapped by sweet and uplifting melodies and totally coming alive after a few minutes. I got the impression that no bad news could ever come from their ascending foot-taping tunes,… even when they were talking about breakups, they sounded cheerful and happy, ‘Do you miss me when you kiss him’, sang the singer duo during ‘Sugar Dream’ with a disarming optimism and a bouncy tempo. The whole bunch looked like they had a lot of fun on stage, just like all these girls dancing along the head-in-the-clouds ‘Bop Bah’…But judging from the bed of tart candies background these two have chosen for the art cover of the single, nobody should be surprised by their carefree and buoyant music.
Set list:
See You Soon
Bop Bah
Sugar Dream
If I Was a Bird
Don’t Let It Slip Away
To the Sea
