Star by Valley James (Side B)

Valley's debut album is Star, which is also the name of her Idaho hometown, near Boise.

If you missed part one of this album deep-dive, you can catch up below. We’ll wait!

Kill For You

Side B begins with Kill For You, one of my favourites. Yes, I am going to say this is my absolute favourite. Many of these songs are cinematic but the drum opening and melody make me go straight to Roy Orbison’s I Drove All Night. She even sings about driving all night but I have not heard Valley mention Orbison as a particular influence; it might just be more of an era she is evoking in these tunes. She has however mentioned Patsy Cline and Chris Isaak. This is a desert driving song for the dark hours. She’s being driven in a ‘57 Cadillac Eldorado singing about love being a loaded gun. It’s just brilliant!

Monster

This is slower and even more atmospheric. Who is the monster here? I’m afraid it is her boyfriend. He looks like a normal man to everyone else, but all she sees is a monster. She contorted herself to try and fit the mould he wanted, but that mould was not consistent. There are suggestions of domestic violence. A dark moment in an album that normally finds lightness and beauty in the darkness but that is totally absent now.

Black Lacquer

Crimson lover, red and black. These colours are often associated with the gothic and are closely associated with Valley James too, whether we are considering something as overt as her hair, which began the year red but is now close to black, or her dresses, lips or nails. Red and black also have associations with gambling. She explicitly mentions ‘red diamonds’ in Monster. They are very much Valley James colours and I love this song too. There’s a Nick Cave Red Right Hand feeling for some reason.

Playing Dead

This is Valley’s most overt coverage of one of the gothic tropes: death, and by implication the afterlife. There are a lot of lyrics in this one, which I love. She is unburdening a story that feels like a real episode (or really a series of episodes) from her own real life.

First time I thought of dying, I was seven years old
My mother’s hands pressed against my mouth
Her rage was silent
No one ever knew that we were living in a burning house

Drive On

Every album needs a good driving song. Musicians spend such a long time travelling, and in America that usually involves driving deserted highways. She is the one driving this time, although the journey is as much metaphorical as literal. One way or another, this being the final track, she is screaming off into the distance.

Her cherry cheeks are another invocation of the colour red. This is a slower and more reflective song, entirely fitting of the end. Fin.

Fire and Flowers and Gasoline

Valley has this week released a new single that is every bit as brilliant as the tracks on Star. Give it a listen! Regular readers might recall my article that tried to codify the components of country music around five G-words, of which Gasoline was one!

On streaming, the album finishes with a bonus track: an alternate version of Crushed Velvet.

Valley James is active on Instagram as well as TikTok and has some wonderful videos on YouTube. She is playing the legendary Pappy and Harriet’s in a festival line-up that includes Chaparelle on 16th November 2025.