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LP
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FTR 144LP
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"Vinylization of an extremely blopsy concept album originally released by NNA Tapes. Great Valley are (or were? not sure) a Brattleboro duo -- Jo Miller-Gamble and Peter Nichols -- who could be joined at times by any of various Southern Vermont locals. On Lizards, the local club includes Chris Weisman, Luke Csehak, Ruth Garbus, Zach Phillips, and others. More recently, however, Jo and Peter have decided to form a new trio with Danny Bissette (who's been playing live with them), and that's called Grape Room. Whether or not this supplants (or merely supplements) Great Valley's existence is not immediately obvious, but we look forward to Grape Room's purple spew. In the meantime, there's Lizards of Camelot to think about. The album is a song cycle that seems to be about reptiles (perhaps with outer space connections) strolling about Arthur Pendragon's keep in the days of the 5th century, eating grapes, thinking about kicking Mordred's ass, and whatever else knights did back in those days. The music is a blend of experimental sound treatments and willfully off-center pop spinnery and even if you can follow the story you'll find the pressure inside your head building to a dangerous degree as you take it all in. Are there hits? Yes. Are there videos? Yes, again. Tune in to 'Outerspace Garden' or 'Lakey Lady' and begin to deal with the repressed memories you have of your days with scales and armor. And if you want to purchase the highly therapeutic LP, act fast. Of them, there are but few." --Byron Coley; Edition of 200.
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LP
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FTR 112LP
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The third album by Brattleboro's Great Valley, who walk as equals amongst the woggly dream-pop giants from the charted region of the upper Connecticut River Valley. Like their brethren, Happy Jawbone (a member of whom surfaces hereon), Great Valley concoct a strange type of pop music, with certain similarities to musicians as disparate as California's Van Dyke Parks and Pennsylvania's Strapping Fieldhands, without yielding a single woof of their Brattleborian distinction. Blanche Blanche Blanche is also represented here by Zach Phillips, but Great Valley's take on the Southern Vermont ethos remains unique. Much of the sound on Continental Lunch has a pointedly ruralist base. Individual notes could be credited to ZZ Top or even members of the Capricorn Records cabal, yet when you engage with the entirety of their sound there is little chance of confusing them with anyone else. Their craft in creating a murky, muddled wall of sonic puh is strange, meaning it's far from usual. Instrumental passages have the crudeness of a carnival band, but these link with vocals bearing the lush potency on any mock-Beach Boys hybrid you could name (even the Rip Chords), albeit with a post-punk compositional modernity that buggers easy comparison. Every song on the album here shifts mood and mode as handily as Tura Santana shifted her hips in Faster Pussycat. There are odd blips of neo-electronic pop, which're immediately subverted by drunk sailor vocals. There are pieces of Matt Valentine/Neil Young vocalese that implode of their own volition in a shower of warm, swallowed sputum. There're blurts of patented 'Boro ganged chorus parts that refuse to stop acting drunk. If this is not one of the most low-keyed balloons of berserk psych blow-uppery, you should give me a list of other contenders. Because you are wrong. The more you listen, the wronger Continental Lunch is. What could be a higher compliment? Edition of 300.
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