This article was originally published on beingtheremag.com, an independent music and film magazine that ran from 2004 to 2007. It is presented here as part of the Being There Magazine archive.
By Adam Anklewicz | Being There Magazine, July 2005
If you’re reading Being There you’re most likely a music fan, and most likely you’ve become obsessed with an album or two. When I received Valery Gore’s self titled debut a few weeks ago, I listened to it a few too many times. I said to myself that it’s okay, I had to listen to it to properly review it. Then I had to listen to it even more because I was interviewing Valery Gore. We spent an hour sitting on the back patio of a bar discussing her album and music. The next day I was trying to figure out what to listen to on the long commute to work, out of the thousands of songs on my iPod, “Elliott Goes”, the opening track to Valery Gore was what I chose. I admit it, this is a really good record and my desire to listen to it has nothing to do with professionalism.
Although Michael Jackson’s Bad was among Gore’s first cassettes, the early 90s saw her listening to a lot of grunge, including Blind Melon and the standards, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. But you’d never guess this by listening to her record. “Then I got into Tori Amos and a woman from the UK who I listened to a lot in high school, Imogen Heap, I was listening to her a lot. I listen to a lot of Peter Gabriel, Joe Cocker and The Police.” Even easier to see in her work are the influences of Elliott Smith, Rufus Wainwright and Ben Folds.
Now that her album has been out for a few months, Gore has already learned that she, like any other lone female artist, will constantly be compared to other women who have followed a similar path. Whether or not her music sounds anything like that of Tori Amos or Sarah Slean, nearly every review of Valery Gore has compared her to those two artists. “People can’t seem to get past the latest girl and a piano thing they know. There are so many people before that you could compare me to, but they chose to say Sarah Slean because I’m a young female artist. I’m not either of those girls although I do think they’re great. I hope that I grow as an artist and do more that will lead [critics] to other comparisons.”
Valery Gore studied classical piano privately in her hometown of Niagara Falls and started learning jazz in college. Though not a fan of jazz, “I really enjoy the skill of being able to play it, overcoming boundaries and learning new things. I just don’t like listening to it as much as I like listening to pop and rock.” Though she credits her musical education for helping her composition along, it also helped her understand of what she was playing. “I could play diminished chords like crazy, but I didn’t really understand how to use them or how to structure them in a song.” Through the 45 minutes of Gore’s album, you’ll hear more than most will by listening to their entire record collection. Gore will change time signature, tempo or genre in the middle of a song. “A lot of people think that it’s all over the place and I’m trying to make it sound fucked up, I’m not.” Though she doesn’t think her music is accessible to the general public, fortunately there are people who realise that music doesn’t have to follow a strict structure.
“More mainstream music can focus on verse/chorus and all that, but once I went through school, I tried to experiment more and try to stray from that. [When writing “Dancing”] I was in a mood where simplicity was in order. I wanted to throw out my feelings and I think that the other songs have an obscurity in them and are more guarded. ‘Dancing’ is a very confessional song so I wanted that simplicity. I wanted nothing to distract it from the message” Gore was recently awarded a VideoFACT grant to produce a music video for “Dancing.” Though it is more simplistic than the rest, it is a great track to nudge people into Gore’s music.
The album has a very homey and personal feeling to it, recorded in three parts. The band was recorded on an open stage at Humber College, the piano recorded at CBC and her vocals recorded at home in Gore’s bedroom. Joined with her friend Andy Pryde to record the album, “We did all the piano in one day, I think it was three hours at CBC. The vocals we took a bit more time on because it was in my room. We’d get together on Sunday and have a sandwich and do some recording. He’d be in the kitchen with his rig and laptop and I’d be down the hallway a bit.”
Adding to the feeling of the home recording, Gore did all the photography, her self-portraits are scattered throughout the record sleeve. Armed with an old Ricoh camera her mother gave her as she started high school, Gore started taking self-portraits as a teenager and during college shot promo material for other artists.
As we chat I see in Valery a shy girl who really doesn’t like talking about herself. She has been thrown into this life through her talent, but doesn’t seem to feel as talented as she truly is. Without an ego in the way, she’s honest while we talk and that personality flows through the album as well. Though she writes from the point of view of characters, the listeners don’t necessarily know if Valery Gore is the same person that is portrayed on the album, though once you talk to her for a while you’ll see her in the music. “When I was listening to music growing up, I would always read the lyrics, obsessively. I can sing any song for you. I always read into them and knew that deep down into those lyrics there was the person. Maybe people can’t imagine me in these songs and don’t know what I’m like at all, but if they listen to the characters in the song they’ll get me.
“I’ve always just written music for myself. “Delorla” started off as a journal entry, then I came across some music for it and stuffed it into a song. That song was probably written in about 10 minutes, one of those stream of consciousness things,” says Gore as we discuss her songwriting and the lyrics behind her songs. “Delorla” is specifically a song where she’s singing from someone else’s shoes. At first listen, I thought it was a lesbian love song, but when you’ve got the lyrics in hand you’ll realize that she’s singing “I’m a lucky man.” “When I first started writing I was 17 or 18 and I was guarding the truth from people who knew me so they couldn’t understand. The point of view I like to take is a little more obscured while still telling a story at the same time. I think that often times you can see yourself better when you take it away from yourself. Though I like Joel Plaskett for his personal perspective and how his songs are always from his standpoint.”
The album closes with a song called “CBC.” It is a simple song where Gore sings, “We bring you the / latest news / from coast to coast”. I had to know what inspired this song. “I worked at [CBC’s] Glenn Gould studio, I was working in the box office; I actually wrote the lyrics and the melody while sitting in the vestibule at CBC. They have a TV museum, and there’s a black and white TV that stays on all day. It’s a news broadcast,” she says with a big grin and puts on a faux-newscaster voice, “We bring you the latest news from coast to coast. So I went back upstairs and wrote the lyrics then.”
Valery Gore is a very strong album, and more so, it shows more potential for the future. Though it’s not what most people expect to find filed in the pop/rock section of their record store, if you’re not afraid of something different, then this album will be a valued part of your collection. In fact, I think I’ll go find that CD that I’ve got filed on my shelf. One more listen can’t hurt.