In director Thomas Lynch III’s video for Valley Queen’s new single “Falling,” singer Natalie Carol is alternately floating downward through a digital galaxy or appearing as an apparition, walking through L.A.
It is certainly not the first time Valley Queen has sounded celestial, but here Carol and bandmates Neil Wogensen and Mike DeLuccia realign the sonic stars, letting the twinkle of synth and percussion light the way for Carol’s lilting vocals.
“Soon after we recorded this song, someone shared with me the Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche quote: ‘The bad news was, I was falling. The good news was, there was no ground’” Carol says. “I think this song is about that. What you think is the ground is the trap door.
“I wrote the chorus of this song years ago with [former VQ guitarist Shawn Morones]. It was a passing refrain we’d come back to repeatedly. I love its simplicity. The verses came much later. Once lockdown hit, I was going up to the roof of my house in Los Angeles to play guitar, and that’s where I finished this one. It was the first song that Mike, Neil and I arranged as a three-piece band. It kicked off a whole new era of sound-making for us, and set the tone for the rest of the album.”
It’s another in a string of singles Valley Queen has released since their 2018 full-length, “Supergiant” and the first since a 2020 collaboration with Cosmo Gold and William Tyler.
“Falling” written by Natalie Carol and Shawn Morones, produced by Neil Wogensen and Mike Deluccia Arranged and performed by Valley Queen
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