In-store: Valery Gore

Valery Gore

Sonic Boom Records. Saturday, April 17, 2010.

Out celebrating Record Store Day in the best way possible — checking out some of the free in-store action put together by Sonic Boom, who are developing a tradition of going all-out on RSD. Although the day would be capped with a big-name draw and a packed house upstairs for Sloan, I came at the other end of the bill, heading down to the basement mid-afternoon to check out local piano popper/singer-songwriter Valery Gore, who had been vouched for as worth seeing by my source. Still lots of elbow room at this point of the day, and I showed up with Gore just having taken the stage but still managed to swing around and get fairly close up on the left side of the room.

Playing alone and seated at her keyboard, Gore's warm voice had a little bit of, say, Chan Marshall's smokiness, but without the spare melancholy. Rather, Gore glowed with a more healthy optimism, and matched that with a brighter sort of work at the keyboard in a Carole King kind of way. "I'm a little bit nervous — I haven't played for awhile," she confessed to the crowd, almost losing her way during "Sparrow". Smiling during the middle instrumental passage, she navigated on the fly, figuring out how to move through the section in the absence of a drummer. "I feel like I'm in grandma's basement right now," she commented as the floorboards creaked overhead, and indeed, the set had an informal basement recital feel and a most pleasantly relaxed vibe.

A short set of a half-dozen enjoyable songs, and then I headed to the back of the room, joining the good number of people digging through the boxes of exclusive Record Store Day releases. And by good luck, Sonic Boom had a couple of things I was looking for, so that felt like a good sign to head outside on a fine day and walk to some more record stores, despite there being more appealing stuff slated on Sonic Boom's stage. Good times.

Listen to a track from this set here.