VALLEY MAKER
We have all become experts in the imbalance of uncertainty these days, newly accustomed to canceling plans and tentatively rescheduling them for some future we can only imagine. For Austin Crane—the ruminative songwriter, riveting guitarist, and singular voice performing and collaborating as Valley Maker—such a sense of uncertainty has emerged as his steadfast companion these last few years, a period of profound transition. This flux is the anchor for Crane’s fourth and best album as Valley Maker, the gorgeous and felicitous When the Day Leaves.
Early in 2019, Crane and his wife, Megan, decided it was time to leave Seattle. South Carolina natives, they’d been in Seattle for nearly a decade while he pursued a doctorate in human geography at the University of Washington, and she worked as a midwife. As Summer 2019 ended, they prepared to head east to Columbia, SC, rejoining a deep community of friends and moving into a century-old home in need of big love. Still, major questions loomed: Would they, just then past 30, like it enough to stay, to start a new life? And what did it mean to go home?
WILSEN
Wilsen are the Brooklyn-based trio of Tamsin Wilson (guitar/vocals), Johnny Simon Jr. (guitar), and Drew Arndt (bass). Ruiner is the second album, follow-up to 2017’s I Go Missing In My Sleep.
With producer Andrew Sarlo (Bon Iver, Big Thief, SASAMI) at the helm, Wilsen’s new album Ruiner dissolves both the heavy reverb and ethereal moments found on their first recording by instead letting the band’s essentials – drums, bass, guitar, and vocals – have centre stage. “Making this record was somewhat of a coming of age process,” Wilson explains.
“I have an inherent shyness,” she says. “I guess I’m acknowledging and finding a way with shyness as I get older.” Throughout the record, Wilson comes to terms with her many sides including her introversion and her inner monster which the album title refers to on ‘Feeling Fancy’. The songs, as a result, are Wilson’s most honest; her openness is especially noticeable on the record’s quieter tracks when Wilson is alone with her guitar; “I woke up in a life not mine,” she murmurs on the spellbinding closer ‘Moon’.
“It’s so dramatic, isn’t it?” laughs Wilson about the title Ruiner. “Another option was ‘Worthless’,” she jokes. But despite the air of melodrama, Ruiner aptly characterizes the process Wilson and the band took to make their album: they had to destroy the walls they built to reveal their authentic selves.