Renny Conti Calls a Spade a Spade in “Valley Ford”

Renny Conti’s “Valley Ford” is a caviar bump of sobering honesty; rife with statements of emotional indifference that dissect themselves upon admittance.

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Stream: “Valley Ford” – Renny Conti

Ford (noun): a shallow place in a river or stream that one can cross.

Ford (verb): to pass through that aforementioned shallow body of water.

To use the noun and verb together in a sentence – I ford a ford – is a self referential act.

Regardless of how clumsy “I ford a ford” might be as a string of words, its encumbrance does not dwarf its interpretation: I cross, I am crossing, I am crossing myself.

To cross oneself is to question everything. And Renny Conti does just this in “Valley Ford” – the follow up single to his eponymous record, Renny Conti, as well as the first of his releases through Mom+Pop.

Valley Ford - Renny Conti — Valley Ford – Renny Conti

I was in the backyard
waiting for a full moon
Nothing ever hurts
if you never let it touch you
Carry my, carry my,
carry my body home
Never need a fix
if you never have a problem
Dreaming of a holiday,
but my money ran late
Manipulating time,
wishing I was in another state
Carry my, carry my,
carry my body home
Why am I afraid of
losing people that I barely know

Conti is tentative and seeking, singing with the cadence of one on the precipice of a realization. Each line lands with a thud of recognition, the pauses in between stretching long enough for listeners to register meaning but not long enough to sit in. There is no time to dwell here, we must keep moving forward.

**The second line of the song, “Nothing ever hurts if you never let it touch you,” best captures the track’s ethos.**

Conti sings from a doldrum; a state of being where life acts upon him instead of the reverse. “Never need a fix if you never have a problem.” These remarks land not as self flagellative, but more so as a matter of fact. With a vocal delivery akin to that in his track, “Looking at the Geese” – in which he shares that shrews are the smallest of mammals and that the world’s most expensive camels are worth 53 million dollars – Conti articulates the phrases in “Valley Ford” as truths innate to life.

Did I lie on, try on you?
Did I move on, move on through?

Will I get back to you?

The track is a gritty case study of distance employed as a mental defense measure. To say these things so plainly is to draw attention to them, one must now address and dissect them. The very exclamation of these statements poses a challenge to their legitimacy. Conti waves a red cape at the bull that is his own sense of apathy, bracing himself for the confrontation ahead.

Listing off every lyric as though it’s an objective field observation and not something he is personally contending with, it is only when Conti questions, “Did I lie on, try on you? / Did I move on, move on through?” in the last minute of the song that the reservoir bursts. The song erupts into an amalgamation of shoegazey-folk. Explosive snares and crashing symbols push the intertwining lap steel and guitar melody forward, before giving way to the quiet buzz of amp static.

Somewhere in my memory
we spent a night alone
Awoke in California
staying in my parents’ home
And out of Valley Ford
I couldn’t see a road ahead of me
Water rising from the rеservoir
and moving over everything

Did I lie on, try on you?
Did I move on, move on through?

Will I give back to you?

Yes, indeed – to ford is to cross; to endure. A resilient meditation on pointed indifference and the internal dissonance it sows, Renny Conti’s “Valley Ford” is as candid as it is pensive and brooding. We are catching Conti mid-motion, witnessing the contrail of searing honesty and tactful wit that he leaves in his wake.

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