Graveyard Club have shared their new single Valens, the first new music from the band since the release of last year’s ‘Goodnight Paradise’. Valens arrives as an early peak at the songwriting the band have been doing for their next album. Lyrically, Valens is an homage to Ritchie Valens, one of the artists Graveyard Club’s Matthew Schufman grew up listening to as a child. Stream the track via SoundCloud below.
The lyrics touch upon “The Day the Music Died”, as Schufman explains below. “As a child I loved early rock and roll music. My parents played it frequently around the house. One of my favorite songs was “Donna” by Ritchie Valens. There was a sweet sadness to it; you could hear and feel the longing in his voice. I still recall when someone first told me about “The Day the Music Died” and how tragic and eerie the story was. The horror of the plane wreck somehow was made worse to me by the location: a frozen field in the upper Midwest.
Through the years, I have thought about the event often, especially around the anniversary as winter draws on and everything is still frozen here. It influenced the words and feeling of Valens- the cold, the isolation, the “twist of fate”, the loss of control. Although the subject matter is dark and foreboding, the band and I intentionally tried to make the song driving and up-tempo. A good deal of our last LP ‘Goodnight Paradise’ leaned into the slower, sadder side of things and with this song we were all interested in trying to push away from that.
While we are working on a new collection of music that currently has no form, we wanted to share this as an early glimpse into our new work.”
This past summer the Twin Cities band released ‘Goodnight Paradise,’ an album brimming with haunting melodies, poetic lyric narratives, and enveloping synths. The band toured both coasts in support of the record, capped off with a packed record release show at the Fine Line in Minneapolis, and closed out the year at the iconic First Avenue Mainroom.
Listen to ‘Goodnight Paradise’ here: http://bit.ly/2UXB78P
For more information on Graveyard Club, visit www.graveyardclub.com.
