The Los Angeles based Death Valley Girls (cool name btw), step out of the darkness and return with a new single, “Dream Cleaver”. Again branded with their incendiary ear candy, that perfectly follows up last years bombastic playground, the well-received Darkness Rains album. They are perhaps one of the finest examples of influence versus impact, taking the seeds of their heroes and planting them deep in the scuzzy grime that oozes from ever guitar crank.
Falling somewhere between The Go-Go’s and Elastica with a flowing texture of seventies, old-school rock embedded in the pumping sweat of the band. This is not so much another incarnation of the ‘Riot Grrrl’ format, instead it is power, The Stooges reborn in a guise of sultry adulation, with all the impact of an atomic explosion. By no means a fantasist statement of quality as “Dream Cleaver” proudly projects.
The core of Death Valley Girls, guitarist Larry Schemel, and multi-instrumentalist, vocalist Bonnie Bloomgarden are pushing forward fearlessly. Where Darkness Rains hung in a feedback-soaked raw attack, “Dream Cleaver” is more melodically pronounced, flowing freely without the rough edge, but retaining all the qualities that are apparent to the outfit. A case of addiction versus appeal, their sound gets under your skin, and the music of Death Valley Girls becomes a joyous necessity
“Dream Cleaver”;
The previous “Disaster (Is What We’re After)”;
