Valet, the recent recording moniker of Honey Owens, is seemingly caught between two ideals: playing ambient music and playing rock ‘n’ roll. On her 2007 debut, Blood Is Clean, she bounced back and forth between sedate, nebulous exercises and fl eshed-out pop songs, though she never clung to either.
Less than a year later on her second album, Naked Acid, Owens has a similar M.O. The record’s eight tracks teeter between atmospheric psych-rock songs built on loose foundations and mellow, ambient tracks that maintain a user-friendly sense of melody.
When Owens plays up the rock aspect of her music, it often stretches into lengthy configurations, like the woozy, effects-drenched “Kehaar.” Her voice, guitars, synths, and drums echo into oblivion like the mystic ocean acid trip adorning the album’s front cover. When Owens steers away from traditional song structure, the resultant tracks are every bit as dense and heady, with white noise and digital delay guiding each note toward a giant, ‘shroom-fried oblivion.
Valet’s greatest trick is her blur between traditional “songs” and amorphous instrumental passages. Owens deals more in sound and its manipulation than within the confi nes of pop songwriting. She teases one into believing the opposite, but there’s always a disorienting and creepy trip-out like “Babylon” to reinforce that this is anything but conventional.
– Jeff Terich
Valet: www.myspace.com/honeyowens
Kranky: www.kranky.net