It’s just past midnight, and I’m sitting in my dimly lit living room, feet propped up on—fittingly—a couch cushion. A record should be spinning, but instead, The Couch Cushion EP by Olivia Valentine is running through my headphones. A glass of something sits sweating on the table, half-forgotten. Outside, the wind rattles the trees, and for the first time in a while, I feel like I’m hearing something that wasn’t made to fit neatly into the machine.
You ever stumble onto an album that feels like a room you’ve been in before? Not in a déjà vu way, but in a this is the kind of place I’ve always wanted to live way? That’s what this record is doing to me. It’s familiar—not because it sounds like something else, but because it taps into that restless, searching energy that great indie rock records have. The ones that don’t settle. The ones that move, morph, spill over their own edges.
And man, this thing moves.
Take the opener, “And Now Just Be”. Dark, hypnotic, but spacious—like standing on the edge of something vast and unknowable. Korosec wrote it after watching pond creatures drift in some Zen-like contentment, which makes sense. There’s something both alien and ancient about it, something that reminds me of Thom Yorke’s more spectral moments, but with the grit of a band that knows how to keep their feet on the ground. The lyrics pull you into that in-between state, half-dreaming, half-awake:
Ease your way / We do not bite / We once had legs / And now we’re free
It feels like a fable, something whispered to you in the middle of the night when your thoughts won’t quiet down. A meditation on surrender, maybe. Or transformation. Either way, it sets the tone—this EP isn’t just about making noise; it’s about chasing something deeper.
Then “Ride” kicks in, and suddenly, the light shifts. Poppy keyboards, muted guitar riffs straight from The Cars’ playbook, and a melody that—if there’s any justice—should be looping in people’s heads all summer. It’s a tribute to Hrabar’s dog, but it’s the kind of song that doesn’t dwell in grief; it shakes it off and barrels forward, full of life.
The sun came out / and I saw you on the other side / and I got up and wanted to play
There’s something about the way the song balances nostalgia and joy that gets me. It’s a reminder that love—whether for a person, an animal, or a moment in time—isn’t just about holding on. It’s about movement, about the things that stick with you even when the world shifts beneath your feet.
And then, “Records Back”. The first single. A tight, punchy, perfectly constructed piece of indie rock. It’s got that blend of vintage synths, bright guitar work, and brass accents that feel both effortless and intentional. A little bit Supergrass, a little bit Bowie, but mostly just Olivia Valentine fully stepping into their own weird, wonderful skin. The lyrics paint a picture of a late-night fallout, half memory, half fever dream:
She told me that she’d be back / She told me just to relax / I tried to get up on my own / She ran and grabbed my elbow / I want my records back, is that too much to ask?
It’s simple, direct, but there’s a sting in it. Anyone who’s been on the losing end of a breakup knows that feeling—the way small things, like records left behind, can hold so much weight. The way a song or an object can feel like the last thread connecting you to something already unraveling.
By the time “Love Is Not” rolls around, things start to stretch and swirl again. That Doug Martsch influence is in the guitars, sure, but the song itself is something else—meditative, urgent, tangled in its own contradictions. The title alone tells you what you’re in for: love, or the idea of it, under a microscope, picked apart, questioned.
Love is not, love is not / Kiss now ready, or not / I don’t know how to cool down / I don’t know how to call it
It’s desperate, uncertain. The words loop back on themselves, circling around something just out of reach. It’s a song that understands that love, real love, is messy. That it resists definition.
And then the closer, “Tangerine Sofa”, and whew. A gut-punch of a song, layered in ghostly keys and backward guitars, the weight of a father’s struggle with addiction pressing heavy on the melody. The imagery is vivid and unsettling:
He brushed the tangerine sofa on his way out / He said I’ve never been the type to go out / Yeah, I know my way
There’s something deeply human about it—the way it captures both the pain of watching someone slip away and the strange, mundane details that get burned into memory. The song doesn’t beg for resolution. It just exists in that space where past and present blur, where grief and acceptance sit side by side.
And that’s the thing about this EP—it lingers. It’s not just a collection of songs; it’s a map of moods, a trip through late-night thoughts and sunlit daydreams. Olivia Valentine has crafted something here that isn’t afraid to be messy, ambitious, and deeply personal.
I take off my headphones and let the silence settle.
Maybe the New Orleans scene needed a band like this. Maybe we all needed a band like this.
Either way, Olivia Valentine is here now. And I can’t wait to see where they take us next.
