Valley

'This Room Is White' (EP stream)

BY Exclaim! StaffPublished Jun 1, 2016

Toronto act Valley are a shiny new group with some lofty ambitions, and their hard work might pay off with the accessible pop sound of their new EP This Room Is White.

The group cite the likes of the 1975, St. Lucia and Arkells as their contemporaries, and those inspirations are all over This Room Is White. Across nine tracks, the group deliver crisp, accessible pop tunes with heartfelt vocals and high-end production.

In a statement, the band's Rob Laska had this to say about the release:

This Room Is White came quite late in the process. We came to the realization that the songs together really started to form a structured story. Travelling together and holding these songs beside us for the past year taught us the importance of flow and environment for a song. The environment for this EP may very well be a white room, which in our eyes represents a clear but controlled and plain ideology. Everything is safe in a white room and almost nothing looks out of place. It's a safe place. The whole ideology behind this EP is to create moments within this controlled environment and create a new moment musically, emotionally — not caring about the outcome. We just wanted to get out.

The room can represent anyone's situation. It is not necessarily the problem but it represents the safety and idea of being too comfortable. People like safety. It's when you take risks where you really feel something more.

The transition tracks represent the absence of not being in the "room". They represent our long drives, our trip to camp, our NYC trip together. The tracks are where we relate our feelings to the outside world, using outside familiar sounds without actually saying anything.  

We decided to take some new approaches with production on them as well and really spent days and days on crafting the exact sounds we heard in our head as the they wrapped around the other songs on the EP.


Valley's Alex DiMauro also added: "This Room Is White has become a true representation of what Valley currently is. It is not a sequel, but rather a new chapter and a new beginning to who we are as artists. A lot of the record really started to take shape towards the end of production, and we now have something that we can really be proud of, and put our name on. These songs really transformed into one distinguishable sound and that's what makes this record special."

Listen to Exclaim!'s exclusive premiere of This Room Is White below. The EP will arrive in full on Friday (June 3), while Valleys will play the Mod Club in Toronto on June 12. You can get more details about the show here.

Tour Dates

Latest Coverage