Running on Empty
Nowadays, we’re constantly searching for what lies beyond our routines, the exceptional, the out of the ordinary. We often assume that only what breaks the norm deserves attention, yet the extraordinary regularly hides in the pauses and small details that make up everyday life. “Petunias”, the new collection of songs by Ava Valianti, sits firmly in that space. Ava puts it plainly that her songs are about ordinary things we take for granted, and that observation becomes the thread that binds “Petunias”, where the beauty of adolescence is not in milestones but in fragments, the half-thoughts, the unspoken notes, the passing moments that slip by before we recognise their weight. Think of the way small flowers creep across city corners each spring, present everywhere and barely noticed because we are always in motion. The record keeps returning to that tension between speed and perception, asking what happens to feeling when life is paced by notifications and the pressure to be seen. The tracks work like short studies in attention, each one peering at a minor detail until it starts to glow. In “Running on Empty”, Ava turns a simple realisation into a knot of questions, wondering how people we love can become people we let go as we grow up, a truth that feels painful, ordinary, and unavoidable all at once. Nothing here shouts for attention; the writing asks for presence, a slower way of listening that many of us have forgotten. “Petunias” reads like a small act of resistance against the anxiety of constant motion. It reminds Gen Z, and anyone else who listens, that meaning often hides in plain sight, and that the ordinary only looks dull when we refuse to look closely. In a culture that urges us to reach for the spectacular, Ava makes a case for staying still long enough to notice.