Woodsist Announces New Signing Hurt Valley

Woodsist is pleased to announce its new signing Hurt Valley, the enigmatic folk-pop project of California songwriter Brian Collins; the label will release Hurt Valley's debut album Glacial Pace on December 6. Collins' life has taken him from playing in punk bands as a teenager in the DC area to his current role as the head of the science department at a Hollywood high school. He wrote the sun-drenched songs of Glacial Pace after a trip to Death Valley - coming across a clearing full of burnt out, vandalized vehicle carcasses inspired him to write about desolation and the things we leave behind.

Hurt Valley has shared the album's melancholic first single "Apartment Houses." "The song is about people who you think you know well, but through some toxic event, you come to find you don't know them at all, and vice versa," says Collins. "It's like that time you thought you were holding someone's hand, but they were holding your hand, only to drag you into the woods and throw you into a pit of snakes." Flood, who premiered the track today, write, "SoCal songwriter Brian Collins sounds right at home on the lo-fi/folk indie label... With the cautionary "Apartment Houses" as a lead single, we're introduced to HV's '60s roots-rock charm and BC's wild imagination."

Glacial Pace is due out December 6; it is available for pre-order HERE.

Hurt Valley - Glacial Place

December 6, 2019 - Woodsist

1. Geology Dreamer

2. Apartment Houses

3. Bothers

4. Live In To It

5. Be The Lighthouse

6. Del Amo

7. I've Been Everywhere

8. Keepsake Ruin

9. No Meaning

10. Immaterial Worlds

LA-based musician Brian Collins records music as Hurt Valley. He makes loosely psychedelic, often rollicking songs that feel like they came from a simpler time, before you realize that the simpler time you're thinking about never really existed in the first place, and you're just romanticizing a past that was as complicated as the present.

All this is to say that Collins makes songs that sound like they're ripped from a forgotten private press record from decades gone but imbued with the weight of right now. Glacial Pace opener "Geology Dreamer" is anthemic and sad, an end-of-the-night (or, let's face it, end of the world) jam that crumbles under lyrics about love and (healthy) obsession and getting through s with people you love and trust.

The last track on the album, "Immaterial Worlds" acts as a mirror image to the opener. Where "Geology Dreamer" hits hard and woozy, "Immaterial Worlds" is soft and intricate, a nakedly contemplative end to an album that sneaks up on you no matter where you might be when you hear it.

Listening to Glacial Pace will no doubt evoke a number of complicated feelings about how you could be living differently, or more simply. The songs here are something of a roadmap to understanding how we got where we are, and what it all means. It doesn't so much give answers as it does is point us toward observations that might push us to question who we are and what we do. Is there a better way to explain modern existence than the line "All we ever do is create immaterial worlds no one occupies in real life"? - Sam Hockley-Smith

Photo credit: Jess McIntosh