Gothy shoegaze band Lucy Valentine has you in its sights

Lucy Valentine performs in Phillies, Dec. 9. / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

By Jon Dunbar

Jennifer Ward has been popping up more frequently all over Seoul's underground music scene lately. She plays guitar for the bands Sour Mango and Oily Rag, but her own project, Lucy Valentine, is also gaining a lot of attention.

Named after the gore director Lucifer Valentine who made the film "Slaughtered Vomit Dolls," Lucy Valentine the band puts on otherworldly, atmospheric shows. Ward wails and channels her guitar through a multitude of effects pedals, accompanied by a drummer and bassist, but let's face it, everyone's eyes are on her.

Some of her male fans have admitted they're terrified of her gaze, as there's something murky and possibly malevolent back there.

"Hunter (of Oily Rag and Incestrul Lust) is constantly asking people how they can make eye contact with me, and I get lots of comments about it at shows," Ward said. "I told Yeawon (Rumkicks) and Christmas (18Fevers) about it, and they told me they thought I looked like a baby the first time I met them. Which is cool, in a way. I don't mind being terrifying to men and sweet to women."

Oily Rag bassist Hunter fears Jennifer, right, seen here during HBC Fest in Hidden Cellar, Oct. 22. / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

When she was studying at university in Los Angeles, she became attached to shoegaze bands like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine.

"I love the bigger-than-your-body feeling of listening to shoegaze, and I was always practicing in dorm stairwells and parking garages for the natural reverb/delay of those spaces. I want to feel like I'm in an abandoned water tower when I play," she said. "In quarantine, it was hard to access the feelings of abundance I had been experiencing before. …It occurred to me around then that I could also accept the entropy and express it creatively."

She first used the name Lucy Valentine for a solo noise project started in 2020/21, something she's never performed live in front of an audience. "That first Lucy Valentine 'Guitar Abuse' EP is by far the ugliest thing I have ever made, but I had a great time in the process," she said.

At some point she started making music with her friends Lucas and Aaron. While she was living in Seattle, she drove 22 hours south to visit them in San Diego. They recorded seven songs they'd been working on in Lucas' home studio.

"I haven't released that album yet; it's nice to take a bit of a break between completing and releasing project recordings," she said. "I've named it Kim Gourd and the Magical Mushroom Garden."

Lucy Valentine has released earlier recordings, so this album will come out at some point. "Our summer recording sessions are really precious to me," she said.

Ward came to Korea in 2019 to study abroad for a semester. She liked it enough that she returned in summer 2021 after graduating university.

Sometime after that, a friend brought her to an open stage at Phillies in Haebangchon (HBC), where she played a short set. As she was finishing up, she noticed the next guitarist, Hunter, setting up to play after her.

"I was totally captivated by his pedal board: he didn't like the names of the pedals, so in thick Sharpie on packing tape he had written things like, 'Echo Chamber in Hell' and 'Doom,'" she said. "I was like, 'I need to play in a band with this boy.'"

The two of them later joined the punk band Oily Rag.

"I think that the punk and goth ethos come from the same experience of the world being a scary place, but in punk it gets expressed as anger and violence whereas in goth it manifests more as reverence for the macabre," she said. "There's lots of similarities between the musical styles, too. Affected vocals, guitar chords way up high, bass as the tonal center. But punk has a much stronger metal influence that prioritizes guitar solos and technical mastery while goth is more about interpreting emotional states and layering instrumental parts together in an interesting way. It's been a lot of fun to explore both styles."

Lucy Valentine performs in Phillies, Oct. 29. / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

She put together a Korea-based lineup for Lucy Valentine which originally included Oily Rag's drummer Suil and Sour Mango frontman June on bass.

"I didn't feel like Lucy V needed bass as a separate instrument," she said. "But having someone hold down the lower end allows me to toy around with melodies and different chord structures. I also love playing with June because we're always doing silly voices with each other. It's so much fun to sing together."

Later, she recruited Mati, another drummer. "I was immediately struck by the weird bass pedal stuff he was doing," she said. "We went to the mountain close to HBC, saw lots of big spider webs and talked about our appreciation for maximalism. It was a wholesome day and I knew that he was the right person for the project."

Lucy Valentine will play a New Year's Eve show this Saturday at Phillies Basement in Seoul's Haebangchon, along with Sour Mango, Incestrul Lust and Rogue Warriors.

Listen to Lucy Valentine at lucyvalentine.bandcamp.com and follow them on Instagram @lucyvalentineband.