Hunter Valentine

Hunter Valentine | Bio

You’ve been blind-sided by a new crush. Your heart has jackhammered your appetite, attention and ability to speak your native tongue right out the window. You’re a weak-kneed, cold-sweatin’, sponge-tongued mess. Friends, family, teachers, classmates and co-workers are sick of hearing about you know who. Pop radio cheese is your new best friend. All those crap songs you once hated now make sense. Suddenly–without a trace of irony–you’re a Mariah Carey fan. Baby’s in love, teetering on the brink of the glorious emotional train wreck called love. Everyone else having left the room, sweet, note-perfect, hook-sharp music remains your only friend. Hunter Valentine understands. From heartbreakers to the heartbroken, singer/guitarist Kiyomi McCloskey, drummer Laura Petracca and bassist Adrienne Lloyd got your back—as well as your love-strapped heart.

From The Marvelettes pleading “Please Mr. Postman,” and Diana Ross & The Supremes sweetly melancholy “Baby, Where Did Our Love Go,” to Sleater-Kinney’s exuberant call-and-response hit “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone,” and Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke wailing about “This Modern Love,” the best pop songs remind us we can fall in and out of love again and again. It the cycle of love that keeps Hunter Valentine beating out their brand of love/loss-struck pop rock.

The Toronto trio first got together in the summer of 2004. Friends united by a mutual love of rocking out, singer/guitarist Kiyomi McCloskey, drummer Laura Petracca and bassist Adrienne Lloyd established Hunter Valentine as a live band by playing countless hometown shows. Not even a year later, they were invited to play both the North By Northeast festival and the Halifax Pop Explosion. Canrock MVP Ian Blurton came on board to produce a self-titled demo EP.

By the fall of 2006, armed with a battalion of garage-rock anthems for heartbreakers and the brokenhearted, they returned to the studio, this time recruiting producer Julius Butty, (Alexisonfire) and engineer Nick Blagona. Together they finessed and distilled Hunter Valentine producing their full-length debut, The Impatient Romantic, released on High Romance Music (an imprint of True North Records) in April of 2007.

Well received in Canada, The Impatient Romantic spawned a nationwide Hunter Valentine tour, which took the band everywhere from Dawson Creek, BC to Charlottetown, P.E.I., where they performed alongside everyone from Sam Roberts and Wintersleep to Social Code and Dragonette. The also performed to enthusiastic crowds at Toronto’s Pride and Montreal’s Divers/Cité as well as Southern Ontario’s Scenefest and Westfest. Hunter Valentine’s fanbase quickly grew beyond Canadian borders, and they soon followed, performing at international events like New York’s CMJ (October, 2007) and the London Calling fest in London, England (June, 2008). (Hunter Valentine will return to perform at CMJ 2009 on October 22.)

By the winter of 2008, Hunter Valentine was ready to take it to the next level. The trio recorded a collection of demos with famed guitarist Tim Welch (National Velvet, Carole Pope), which revealed a matured sense of sophistication in both the writing and arrangements of the songs. Imagine the scratched melodies of punks like Chrissie Hynde and Linda Perry meshed with the romanticism of Canadian indie rock torchbearers like Stars and the Arcade Fire and layered with the meticulous low-end of classic Motown.

In July 2009, the band reunited with producer Ian Blurton to record new material at Toronto’s Chemical Sound Studio. Armed with these fresh new recordings and a determination fostered in Canada’s independent music scene, Hunter Valentine signed a worldwide licensing agreement with Tommy Boy Records for the release of the “Lessons From the Late Night” EP to be released in February 2010.

Lead singer Kiyomi tells us what to expect,”Lessons From the Late Night represents a more grown-up Hunter Valentine. Whether its been from sitting next to a «seasoned» musician at a dive bar telling us how it is, hanging out with crush ‘til dawn hoping for a kiss, staying up too late with mom or crying all night after being rejected. We have been beaten down, picked up and set straight (but not too straight) along the way, and this record is about all of that - the story of us growing up.”