Stereogum Album of The Week: Margo Cilker Valley Of Heart’s Delight
Before the computer scientists, marketing agencies, and self-described “disruptors” had their way with it, the Santa Clara Valley used to be known as the Valley Of Heart’s Delight. The Northern California region was so nicknamed because its abundance of orchards, plants, and flowering trees made it a leading exporter of canned fruit — and presumably because of the multi-sensory splendor that tends to accompany so much well-tended nature. In practice, the Valley Of Heart’s Delight is no less a branding exercise than Silicon Valley, but the former name spoke to far different qualities, ones that might never be coming back now that big tech has proven to be a more profitable harvest.
Margo Cilker grew up in the valley, but by the time she was born it was already morphing into the place we know today, ripe not for the tasting but for biting satire. Cilker moved away from home in her twenties; she bounced around to North Carolina and the Basque country and eventually settled in the rural Pacific Northwest with her husband, a ranch hand. Despite family roots in Santa Clara County that go back five generations, she now feels alienated from both the land and its inhabitants. That disconnect haunts Valley Of Heart’s Delight, the singer-songwriter’s second full-length LP.
Cilker’s 2021 debut Pohorylle was one of those records that never dredged up a torrential hype storm but became a treasured favorite for many. Produced by Sub Pop alum Sera Cahoone with a band including indie-folk veterans like the Decemberists’ Jenny Conlee-Drizos, Pohorylle presented Cilker as a chronicler of the world’s less explored corners, with a knack for smart, funny wordplay and a musical style that blurred the lines between country and folk-rock. In naming it one of the year’s best country albums, Marissa R. Moss raved, “There’s so much unexpected joy and wit,” while Stephen Deusner marveled at how much meaning Cilker wrung out of the expletive in opening line “That river in the winter, it could fuck me up.” Comparisons to greats like Emmylou Harris, John Prine, and Gillian Welch inevitably followed.
Valley Of Heart’s Delight runs it back with subtly spectacular results. Cahoone is once again on board as drummer and producer, and Cilker’s bandmates, mostly from Portland, have worked with artists like M. Ward/She & Him, Beirut, Band Of Horses, and Neko Case. They make a good team. As if mirroring the mix of thoughtful precision and cheeky playfulness Cilker brings to her lyrics, the band plays just loose and carefree enough that every meticulously plotted arrangement seems to breathe with spontaneity. Seemingly every instrument gets its moment to shine, be it the brass section that gives “Keep It On A Burner” the wobbly grace of New Orleans jazz, the eerie indie rock atmospherics at the end of “Mother Told Her Mother Told Me,” the harmonica solo that rips through “Santa Rosa,” or the way Conlee-Drizos’ saloon piano seems to converse with Paul Brainard’s pedal steel on the cross-country rambler “I Remember Carolina.”