Valerinne – Arborescent

December 14, 2013 • self-released

As I've stated before, I don't listen to a lot of post-rock anymore. I overdid it some time ago and there's plenty of other kinds of music I'd rather explore these days. However, every once in a while I'll discover some odd band here or there that makes me wonder why I ever gave up on it; in this case, Valerinne, a Romanian trio who, though not particularly original, are making some pretty darn good music.

Well, they bill themselves as a post-rock band, but aside from the excessive reverb and delay effects, Valerinne doesn't really have much to with post-rock at all—at least, they aren't much like the overabundance of sprawling orchestral groups (not that there's anything wrong with that, of course). If anything, they belong to the "fourth wave" (or however many waves we're on) of bands like Red Sparowes or Russian Circles, which are rooted in post-rock but combine it with a sort of organic, artsy, alt-rock style. I like how those other bands do it, and I like how Valerinne does it as well. There's nothing too unconventional about it, but it does provide some very satisfying listening.

The bass and drums provide a very solid rhythmic backbone for the guitar to go off on wild exploratory tangents in an almost psych-rock way, but there's enough restraint applied that it doesn't get full of itself like psych rock does. There's a relative lack of solid, memorable riffs or motifs (that I've discovered so far), as they opt instead for a soundscape-like approach, so the music can get a little dense at times and the song structures seem a little arbitrary and occasionally repetitive. But it's still definitely one of the better applications of this style that I've heard in a while (and there are some relatively upbeat and catchy bits as well—there's a little of everything, really).

So even though I don't really listen to this kind of music much anymore, I'm pleased to have had heard Valerinne. Definitely worth looking into for something to put on and just space out to.