2018 was the year when I discovered Death Valley Girls. I follow a concert series on YouTube called Jam In the Van. Bands are asked to put all their gear and musicians into a tiny van and play in front of a camera. For some bands, that is a tight squeeze!
Death Valley Girls managed fine, and it was quite the revelation to see them for the first time ever in such a setting.
Frontwoman Bonnie Bloomgarden presented the then new song Disaster (Is What We’re After) with much aplomb, almost seeming like a rock’n’roll version of Little My from the Moomin books.
That performance made me seek out more, including the album when that came later in the year. It reminds me of why I fell in love with rock’n’roll to begin with.
Death Valley Girls have of course been around longer than 2018. Their first album Street Venom was released in 2014, and follow-up Glow In the Dark followed in 2016. The two-year cycle is well and truly established with the release of their new album Darkness Rains in 2018.
The band hails from Los Angeles, and in addition to Bloomgarden on vocals, organ and guitars, the band features Laura Harris on drums, Alana Amram on bass, and the lone male Death Valley Girl Larry Schemel on guitar.
The band’s highlight from 2018 was getting Iggy Pop to appear in the music video for Disaster (Is What We’re After). I’m not sure if I’m biased because it was the first song I heard by them, and – c’mon, it’s Iggy! – but it is my favourite on the album by far, and a perfectly natural single choice as far as I’m concerned.
What did Iggy do in the video? He sat down by a table with a bag containing a burger and some fries, and spends the song eating most of it. At the end, he says “My name is Iggy Pop, and I just ate a burger for the Death Valley Girls.”
That is all, and perhaps it is debatable how exciting such a video is to watch. As a huge Iggy fan myself, I think this is extremely cool, and no doubt led to a lot of attention for DVG that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. It’s mostly very nicely done of the Ig to give DVG that rub. Anyone following their social media will know how much that meant to them.
The album is produced by Mark Rains, and once you notice that last name you got to wonder if the title of the album is a reference (good or bad) of sorts rather than the play on words one could first suspect. In any case, as a standalone title it describes the feel of the album well.
Darkness Rains is a punchy and to-the-point album, featuring ten neatly trimmed slices of rock’n’roll. The whole album is just about 34 minutes.
The band has always had a fierce, garage-rock, pseudo-psychedelic energy about them. DVG may be rock’n’roll, but there is a dark and manic side to the music that makes this as far from ‘party rock’ as you can possibly come.
Having said that, some of the songs on the new album are quite alluring and even catchy. Producer Rains has attempted to channel the band’s unique energy into different types of rhythms, grooves and tempo, making it a slightly more varied collection of songs than before. A song like Disaster (Is What You’re After) very suitably holds back the tempo and lets the song chug along nicely in mid-tempo – albeit a very attitude-rich mid-tempo!
The more energetic and manic DVG moments of yore are still present here, in songs like opening track More Dead, (One Less Thing) Before I Die, and Street Justice. You can’t (nor should you) tame this band completely.
Unzip Your Forehead also holds back a bit, but still builds some intensity as the players add a lot of urgency to their playing and bits of noisy instrumentation, managing to build some power in the process.
Bonnie Bloomgarden’s vocal delivery is fairly unique and may initially be an acquired taste. Her manic vibrato suits the wilder garage rock moments just fine. On this album, she is finding her voice on slower, groovier material as well. One such song is Occupation: Ghost Writer where she channels her usual high-pitched vibrato delivery but makes it match the rhythm and feel of the song quite well.
A bigger stretch for both vocalist and band (or at least more unusual from these guys) is likely album closer T.V. In Jail On Mars – the longest song by far on the album at nearly six minutes. The vocal is muted and completely vibrato-less, and the band starts getting into a rhythm, playing along quietly at first but building into something very slowly throughout… before it ends. It’s a very moody piece of music for sure, and very different for DVG. At the same time it very much sounds like them.
This is still a young band, and they keep developing on each album. Darkness Rains is clearly their best effort yet and show remarkable growth. I am already looking forward to hearing what they have to offer next time – in two years, of course.
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