Valerie June
Owls, Omens, and Oracles

As my very own Venerable Teacher and my very own Venerable Master of DeBaser taught me, when you want to play the role of a music critic, you don't need to spend too many words. Just put a tick on what you feel more between "I like it / I don't like it" or "it's good / it's not good".

So, if you want, you can skip directly to the last line.

So, to start somehow, for me Valeria Giugno is not just beautiful, she's much more. And, since those who really matter swear that image is everything, she's already in a really good place: there's a video on YouTube of her singing and playing "Endless Tree", wearing a red-hot dress as simple as it is sassy, purple tights, and glittering silver boots, a little flowery meadow adorning the most beautiful and intricate dreadlocks ever, and whoever doesn't fall in love with her is simply incapable. Changed a lot since I met her around "Pushin’ Against A Stone", it was 2013 and today's explosion of joy, optimism, and color was still far from being triggered. For that, we had to wait until 2021 and a delightful little track titled "Smile" within an equally delightful album.

"Colours and patterns / You can see the real me", quoting another favorite of mine in reverse. Anyway, to borrow the words of another of my very own Venerable Masters of DeBaser, she's also quite the hottie, yesterday, today, always.

And also with a beautiful mind beneath that impressive mass of hair: poet, illustrator, half lecturer, half conference speaker, and I can even see her as a philosopher halfway between St. Paul and St. Augustine on one side, and Georges Perec and Roland Barthes on the other, perhaps without her even knowing, and if that were the case, it would seem like an even more beautiful story.

In short, the best thing is that behind a colorful smoke screen lies a little universe all to be explored, and today I stop at "Owls, Omens And Oracles".

An album that is like retying a thread: yesterday I had high praises for "Smile" and today "Joy, Joy!" is still a declaration of obvious clarity, the dance verve replaced by a powerful rhythm'n'blues drive supported by dazzling horns and strings, the queens of soul are there, Carla Thomas is there and the Stax Music Academy makes an appearance, as in "Changed"; yesterday it was the cover of "Imagine", today it's an "Endless Tree" free from all that cloying and pompous rhetoric—only minimally attributable to Lennon—to reaffirm that if you want to see a world where everyone is at least free, it's fine to be able to imagine it, but if you get off the couch and try to do something, that's much better; yesterday there was the enchanting "Two Roads", today a tear-jerking final "Love And Let Go"; yesterday it was a duet with Nora Jones, today it's again a duet with Nora Jones in a "Sweet Things Just For You" that seems like a lullaby for lovers and ennobles an otherwise frustrating idea of featuring; and, still on the topic of duets, a few days ago it was the one with Sunny War in "Cry, Baby", a soul modernism drawn from the excellent "Armageddon In A Summer Dress", now there's this "Superpower" that excellently mixes soul and dub; and then, today, as yesterday, there's a good deal of tradition polished to a shine, from the boozy brass band accompanying Valeria wandering through the streets of New Orleans while singing "Love Me Any Ole Way" to the resplendent Carole King piano and voice that hover in "Trust The Path" and "I Am In Love".

And, if it wasn't clear, I like this album, it's good, and all the lines between the first and the last might not even need to be there.