Paige Valentine gets deep into 70s nostalgia in the wild, romantic single, 'Retrograde'

Western Australian singer-songwriter Paige Valentine shares the final preview of her debut album with hazy, retro-tinged pop moment ‘Retrograde’. Her debut album ‘Lucky Blue’ is due out Friday 12 April via Nettwerk.

In ‘Retrograde’, Paige Valentine bathes herself in 70s prog and stadium rock soundscapes, and sprinkling in a touch of 80s melodrama for extra flavour. Driving, but not overpowering, allowing the story to shine through, and Paige to channel a bit of Chrissie Hynde confidence, vocally. The swirling interaction between guitars and synths lifts the song right up to the atmosphere, to the point of euphoria. It’s a track that captures wild love and living free, with Paige handling it with both familiarity and freshness.

Steeped in nostalgia and an ode to star-crossed but flawed partners in love and crime, the track came to Valentine in a dream. “At the time there were a few things going on that were pretty key to inspiring the song. The first, was an incident that swept up the small community where I live. It’s a tiny town with a population of about 40 people (including the surrounding farms) there are no police, no shops, there is only a small road house. The story was that there was a guy and girl on the run from police after the guy “saved” the girl from her boyfriend, big punch-ups, the works. Full wild west style. They were on the run, apparently hiding out at farms, stealing fuel and camouflaging their car,” she explains.

“The chorus came to me right before I woke up and was about to make the 8-hour drive to Perth to start recording the last song. In my dream this huge crowd was singing along to the chorus. When I woke up, I was so upset because it wasn’t real, but the melody stuck with me!...To me ‘Retrograde’ is most in the spirit of where the record was born. It’s the last frontier, a place of run-away bandits, living for the moment and embracing the wild and intoxicating spirit of youth. Those moments and legends live on forever.”

Paige’s love for the natural world is intrinsically linked to her divine sound, and you can hear it in every part of her forthcoming debut album 'Lucky Blue', produced with Andy Lawson.

Across its 10 tracks, Paige can trace the sonic line between the music she made in the city and the music she made in remote WA, in a town of 40 people, surrounded by unexplored wilderness and perched on the edge of the world.

Featuring singles including uplifting indie-pop anthem ‘Cloud Dancing’, raw, slow-burner ‘Don’t Tell Her’, summer-infused ‘Navigate’, powerful slow-burner ‘Horoscopes’, and ‘Retrograde’ alongside a re-imagined version of her 2020 breakout single ‘Pure’, ‘Lucky Blue’ is a sonic transformation – traversing Paige’s move from stability and comfort, of rebuilding and reshaping her life, of remembering the lightness of living, and of diving into isolation and thriving in the face of adversity. All of it started at a studio with a little blue door that had a horseshoe above it…

Get absolutely lost in ‘Retrograde’, which is out now on all streaming platforms, and get ready for Paige Valentine’s album, ‘Lucky Blue’, arriving on April 12.