Death Valley is an area of northern California regarded as one of the most hostile to humans on earth. It’s three thousand square miles of oven.
Incorporating that into your name is therefore the boldest of plays unless you’re churning out black metal or some sort of weird nosebleed techno – neither of which is Death Valley Girls’ thing. So…
In fact, the Girls also hail from California, albeit the more hospitable area of San Diego, but are now residents in L.A.. Originally a project formed by ex Hole drummer Patty Schemel and her brother Larry, they recruited singer Bonnie Bloomgarden, and since Patty’s departure have now solidified their line-up with the additions of Laura ‘The Kid’ Kelsey and Nikki Pickle. Taking their gothic cues from heritage acts such as Black Sabbath, The Velvet Underground and The Cramps, the quartet have been responsible for the Street Venom, Glow In The Dark and Darkness Reigns albums since 2014.
Bloomgarden has described Under The Spell Of Joy as a ‘space-gospel’ record, the album title supposedly derived from a t-shirt she got from San Diego psych-rock group Joy which she then wore for five years straight, whilst musically the inspiration is sourced via the jubilant spirit of the Ethiopian funk they’d been listening to whilst out on tour.
As you can tell, sorting fact from fiction in the DVG universe is something of a fool’s errand. What is clear is that their fourth album, even when shrouded in vaguely new-age paraphernalia, has plenty of ambition. Opener Hypnagogia – ‘an ode to the space between sleep and wakefulness where we are open to other realms of consciousness’ – layers sounds and suspense, brooding with a bad guy soundtrack menace, while the Wurlitzer, surf’s UP girl band chintz of Bliss Out takes a sneak peak at the astral plane as Bloomgarden sings, ‘We’re all gonna die’.
It’s probably most accurate to say that the whole exercise exists somewhere in the unlit margins, the gaps between sleep and wakefulness, heaven and earth, prayer and godlessness. Here, The Universe wavers, a mass of psychedelia, chants, ambient swirls and arcing sax that plays as if the righteous are the only audience it deserves.
Underneath all the bunk however there’s a more grounded streak; closer Dream Cleaver, It All Washes Away and particularly Little Things are all more than passable, frothy garage with a side-serving of kickass and a dollop of good times, a nod to the band’s real mission which is to bring people together to sing and dance in an age where everyone is increasingly more hostile to everyone else.
The album’s unquestionable centre-piece however is the title track, which employs a children’s choir that sounds like it was hired in from Waco and a devilish, White Stripes-esque simplicity, a skronking blues-rock soul saver with a breakneck shouted out climax. Once heard, it’s damn hard to not spontaneously blurt the refrain out in the course of real life participatory events. Hardly the weirdest thing here, it is the best.
You wouldn’t see the Death Valley Girls in Death Valley, because that would be insane. But you might catch them in a bar or club, just to let them put you under their hex one more time, a coven with a plan and some tunes with which to cast some spells.
