While you might know them from their wildly popular song ‘Go’ – the theme to HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver – what you might not know is that Valley Lodge is also rock and roll’s greatest living band.
Led by singer and guitarist Dave Hill, think of Valley Lodge as an aural amalgam of Cheap Trick, T. Rex, Big Star, Thin Lizzy, and The Kinks. It’s power pop meets pop rock meets your best friend’s parents who are going out of town. You think no one will notice if you throw a pool party. It’s 1978. You’re sixteen and you’re hooked on glue.
Hill himself is no stranger to vivacious living, leading a dual life working hard as an international comedian, author, and actor (Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt, Joe Pera Talks With You, Inside Amy Schumer) and playing harder as a former member of Cobra Verde; Sons of Elvis and Walter Schreifels Band. Valley Lodge was formed in 2004 and is made 47% more handsome with the addition of drummer Rob Pfeiffer and bassist Eddie Eyeball.
Having already released four albums, the band recently completed recording on their fifth – the incredible Shadows in Paradise – and have teamed up once more with Tee Pee Records for its official release this April. Recorded with producer Tom Beaujour (Nada Surf, Aeon Station, Juliana Hatfield), it features several close and extremely talented friends of the band. Guided By Voices’ Doug Gillard contributes killer guitar and backup vocals, legendary Columbus, OH musician Happy Chichester (Royal Crescent Mob, Howlin’ Maggie, Twilight Singers) plays keyboards and sings, along with Long Neck’s Lily Mastrodimos, opera diva Jennifer Valle, and Next Great American Novelist’s Sean Cahill. From the epic riffs of opener ‘Daylights’ to the seductive overtones on closer, ‘That Love’, Shadows in Paradise is jam-packed with earworms and AM radio mixtape vibes:
“Our new single, ‘I Wrote a Song’, is two-minutes and fifty seconds of pop rock schizophrenia that sounds kind of like Paul McCartney if he’d joined Big Audio Dynamite on bass to record a song for a homecoming dance in a John Hughes movie,” explains Hill.
“There’s even piano, synths, and violin plucks on this one, and lyrics that include references to suburban street gangs, nomadic warriors in East Africa, and even a passing reference to eighties Canadian muscle metal band THOR, which doesn’t happen nearly enough in modern music.”
In between recording bankable pop masterworks, the band has toured Japan (where they are considered God-like geniuses) and were the house band for Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, Valley Lodge puts on public displays of their patented live rock assault several times a year and will be touring Shadows in Paradise soon.
Shadows in Paradise by Valley Lodge is released on 19th April 2024 and can be pre-ordered here. Listen and stream their new single ‘I Wrote a Song’ here
