There is a cult-like fascination growing around Kassi Valazza following the self-release of her 2019 debut album Dear Dead Days and her surprise 2022 EP Highway Sounds. Expect that cult to grow larger with the release of her new album, Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing.
Kassi Valazza’s new album Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing is a spellbinding collection of songs that dangle like protective magic talismans, catching dreams and glinting light. She hypnotizes listeners with a sturdy, yet gentle voice and painterly songwriting imbued with an independent spirit. Though her music plays country cousin to British folk, calling to mind greats like Sandy Denny/Fairport Convention and Karen Dalton, a Southwestern American streak carves its way through these solemn, sweetly sung melodies like a canyon. Valazza’s songs manage to capture the romanticism of country crooners with the intuition of a realist poet. Her gutsy and graceful poetry is backed by swirling Western psychedelia as she explores themes of love and longing through metaphors from the natural world.
On recording the 10-song set, Valazza offers, "On this album, everything was recorded live, all the vocals and instrumentation. We recorded in a room together with fellow Portland-based band TK & The Holy Know-Nothings, who hadn't heard any of the songs before we went into the studio. You're rarely going to find a songwriter that writes and composes every single song; it's a combination of people working things out together, of what I want and what the band hears. When people don't know the songs, it’s a lot looser and more magic can happen. You don't overthink it.”
Seated squarely at the vanguard of new American songwriters strengthening and broadening the sound of country and western, the Southwestern native resides in Portland, a hotbed of songwriters producing albums that both bear the torch and bend the arc of American roots music.