Spring Valley Drive-Thru – Quack

Spring Valley Drive-Thru – Quack – EP Review

I’m gonna start this off by telling you something you won’t hear from other music critics and reviewers out there, because generally speaking, they ain’t gonna tell you the truth.  Here’s the reality though – dedicated listening…REAL listening…is NOT fucking easy – and I know this is true, because that’s the actual religion I practice.  So while my ‘peers’ out there are content to play on their iphones, have the TV on in the background, surf the internet, try to figure out if that lump at the top of the crack of their ass is or isn’t cancer, and/or maybe even READ something that’s not their own shit for a hot minute – I’m over here looking at a bowl of Munchies I poured out for myself, hating the fact that they’re so fresh right now.  At least if they were stale, they wouldn’t have so much of a kickass crunch to them…but because this is a fresh bag, I can’t even eat’em right now while I’m trying to listen to this new EP called Quack by Spring Valley Drive-Thru.  The most I’m gonna admit here is that I did ATTEMPT to eat this tasty snack when I first put the record on, but quickly realized I couldn’t hear a damn thing over the crunch.  Of course I COULD combat said crunch by turning the volume UP even more than I have it now, but it’s like, what…something like one o’clock in the morning here and my neighbors hate me plenty enough already.  So nooooooooo.  I gotta go snackless.  Because I do the right thing.  I listen.  This better be really good.

Obviously they start messing with me from the get-go…unleashing what I’d assume is some kind of backwards audio to begin the Quack EP with on “No Sound.”  I can get behind this track though…once it kicks in, it’s like…fuck…kind of like we walked into someone’s game of Tetris or an old 8-bit game without it actually BEING that, you feel me?  It’s like we’re wandering around on level 3-4 or something, and I’m here for it!  Crossed with the harsh constraints of having to be an actual song with merit as well, a combination like this is genuinely unique, but equally effective as both art AND entertainment.  There’s a metric ton to love about this if I’m being entirely honest with ya…especially if you’re the type of person that enjoys a tune or two that’s well off the beaten path.  Listen to the way the synth melody lights up the circuit boards right off the bat…listen to the way they surge into the wicked energy of the chorus…listen to the space in the recording…listen to that FINALE will ya?  No joke folks – this is a seriously entertaining recording in a whole variety of ways, and I haven’t even mentioned the fact that conceptually, it’s just as badass.  Whether you think this all takes place on the inside of one man’s head, or you feel like you can relate to it from personal experience with or without your pills (no judgements here man), “No Sound” cleverly explores the space between what is and what isn’t to leave you guessing as to what is or isn’t real.  As a firm believer in Matrix theory and that nothing around us is real, believe me, I can definitely understand the concept of hearing voices & such.  How could I not?  I hear’em every single day.  They tend to be attached to faces and those faces are attached to bodies and those bodies are generally considered to be people, but in the realm I exist in, that don’t make’em any more real than the wisp of nothingness that rides into your ear from seemingly out of thin air.  #Truth – “This life’s a lie,” as they’ll tell you directly in “No Sound” like they’re emptying the full contents of my head into the speakers.  C’mon y’all…the solo that occurs around the 2:45 mark?  If you’re not digging that, I am afraid we can longer be friends.  As for the final transition around 4:20…fuck…these guys could have written an entire song around that & yet it’s just one last mighty piece of this proverbial puzzle before it’s all over.

“It’ll All Be Okay.”  You don’t KNOW that!  I’m willing to play along though.  Mainly because I feel like all you need to play along with Spring Valley Drive-Thru is another quarter for the machine, and I’m cheap like that.  So…let’s see here.  I think the obvious, but justified comment, is that this band is hella strange.  You’re not going to find too many tracks out there like “It’ll All Be Okay,” and that in itself, is also okay.  It’s awesome to stumble upon an oddity in a beautifully bizarre corner of the music scene…this is the kind of discovery that confirms it actually hasn’t all been done before, and I appreciate that.  Are the masses going to ‘get’ Spring Valley Drive-Thru?  Probably not, but I don’t really feel like they couldn’t either…this music definitely has a niche appeal to it, but it’s authentic and interesting at all times too.  Like, if you were one of them super smart scientists with the skinny knife and you had to put the DNA of a song like “It’ll All Be Okay” onto a slide, you’d never know where to make a slice from for an accurate representation, and once you got that sucker under the microscope, you’d be fucking amazed at how much there was to examine.  There’s tangible melody, there’s uniqueness, there’s P-H-A-T synth sounds that’ll tickle your parts whether or not you turn up your subs…there’s art, entertainment, and music all combined effectively…and you know something else?  It’s got a genuinely FUN vibe to it at the core too.  Like…you can feel the willingness to experiment and do things differently here…which ends up being strangely calming, even as we dive into the unknown along with them…somehow, we know “It’ll All Be Okay.”  In keeping with the video-game-esque feel they’ve got in their sound, this cut feels like we’ve gone down one of those shiny warp pipes and we’re in the upside down now, wandering around with the stranger things.  It’s like part-mantra, part kaleidoscope, and all awesomeness…there’s a truly weird level of calm in this song that really works brilliantly.  “It’ll All Be Okay” has me believing it really might be after all.  Which is seriously kind of amazing considering the wild degree of fuckery we’re surrounded by daily…”mentally…spiritually…emotionally” and such.  Find your happiness wherever you can friends.  For me, that’s always in the music and discovering songs & bands like this one here, that’s what makes things okay in my world.  I know we just met Spring Valley Drive-Thru & all, but I appreciate you homies.

As far as “Ed Money” is concerned…hmm…I suppose a couple things can be true.  The first thing being, the execution is still all where it should be – Charles, Shane, and Avery, have not let themselves down in how they’ve played these three tunes.  For as experimental as their hybrid style of sound is at the core of it all, you’d expect to find a few flaws here and there, but there’s really not a whole lot to complain about as far as how they perform is concerned.  Does that mean I love “Ed Money?”  Fuck no!  It means that I can find things I dig about it, but loving this song would probably be a bit of a stretch for me on a personal level.  Most music fans will get the reference in the title and the sound…and if not, you’ll find clues buried in the lyricism for you to chew on, like “let me take you home tonight” – that’s probably the most direct lifeline you’ll get outside of phoning a friend.  Ultimately, “Ed Money” is a tributary tune of sorts…but as I’ve said more than a few times on these pages of ours, just because you can doesn’t always mean that you should, you follow me?  We end up in this oversexualized and sensualized song that certainly emulates its main inspirations…but like…fuck…I need a shower now!  I can feel that 80s sweat and neon all over me…I can smell the spandex and headbands…and like…damn…it’s awkward lol.  I didn’t ask to feel like this!  They’ve foisted this upon me, and here I am.  There are some absolutely killer ideas happening in the main hooks of the guitar, which I dig – but if I’m being real with ya, even though we just started getting to know Spring Valley Drive-Thru through the two previous tracks, it does feel like this third one is a bit less of the them that we were just starting to figure out, you know what I mean?  It’s like we get two tracks that somewhat make sense to be together on this EP, and this third tune that feels like it should appear after about a half hour of silence on a CD in that old hidden song style, where a band or artist would reveal a totally different dimension of who they are after they feel like everyone has tuned out or gone for another smoke.  You end up looking at tracks like this one in a couple different ways.  You admire it for hitting the scope of its ambitions, sure.  You are impressed by the way they dialed into the concept and executed it, yes.  If you’re familiar with “Ed Money,” bonus I suppose.  It’s one of those tunes that feels both good and bad to like…guilty pleasures they’re called.  I might be a little more out than in on this final cut, but I felt like the other two tracks on this Quack EP were built of a killer combination of substance and style that I can fully stand behind.  As a man named Meatloaf once said, “2 out of 3 ain’t bad” – and as Mr. Natural once said, “don’t let your meat, loaf.”

So there you have it!  I think?  I dunno…listen to Spring Valley Drive-Thru…there’s some real kickassery goin’ on at the heart of all this musical madness – I’m definitely looking forward to whatever the heck else they go on to do…which quite clearly, could be anything.

Find out more about Spring Valley Drive-Thru by reading this article all over again at this link here:  https://sleepingbagstudios.ca/spring-valley-drive-thru-quack

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