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Although Valleys are, at their core, a folk group, they're certainly not folk in the traditional sense of the word. Yes, they have the acoustic guitars and folk vocals, but they explore a lot of tangents on their mysteriously titled debut, Sometimes Water Kills People. It's these tangents - Another Green World-styled ambient, post-rock, psychedelia, lo-fi - that are the most interesting thing about the band. The songs tend to start out the same way, with a simple acoustic guitar part, along with some hushed and rather non-descript male-female harmony vocals. However, at about the halfway point, they take off and go someplace a little more unique and exciting. The best of these musical excursions are the machine-gun drums dropped into the haunted, and surprisingly sexual "Tan Lines", and the Spacemen 3-esque guitars at the end of "The Heavy Dreamer". As exciting as these moments may be, even they lose their luster as the same trick gets used too often in the album's sluggish second half. All said, there's some promise here, but more varied song structure and a better quality recording would help deliver it.
DAVID MANSDORF
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