Semi-bluesy, slightly countrified independent female singer-pianists are everywhere these days. Is a mad scientist cloning them in the basement of a music school? That said, Diane Birch knows how to set herself apart. Funny, punchy and a little weird, her song "Valentino" makes a quick but deep impression; once you hear it, it's hard to forget.
Stanton Moore of the New Orleans band Galactic taps out a mischievous beat at the song's start, banging his sticks against a metal police barricade he brought into the studio from the streets. Then Birch enters the scene, singing "woo-ooh-hoo" in her sharp yet warm voice, as if imitating a kazoo. The object of her affection here: a guy named Valentino, an imaginary 18th-century friend Birch says entered her life when she was a teenager.
Only now, as the song explains, Birch has moved to Hollywood and landed a job playing piano in a pink hotel; Valentino didn't come along. Nine out of ten psychiatrists would likely tell you the song is about saying goodbye to the follies of youth. Yet Birch, wedding an ebullient pop piano to Moore's catchy drumming, doesn't seem entirely sure Valentino is gone; after all, he's still the only one she wants. So she closes the song with a beautifully hummed riff, as if making a last-ditch attempt to woo her unavailable beloved.
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