Death Valley Girls Under The Spell of Joy 8.3 / 10 Desert Rock

October 3, 2020

Death Valley Girls Under The Spell of Joy

8.3 / 10 Desert Rock

Death Valley Girls Under The Spell of Joy hit the shelves on October 2nd 2020 from Suicide Squeeze Records.

Death Valley Girls Under The Spell of Joy is a desert rock album with songs that wil make you dance. The groove oriented drums, vintage organs, saxophone and gritty backed vocals pop and rock with a hint of 1980’s charm. The songs grab the listeners attention with anthems and group vocals on choruses that beg the listener to sing along. This is their most ambitious album to date with restraint on their charged sound and thoughtful compositions with layers of instrumentation.

Death Valley Girls released their first album Street Venom in 2014. Signing to Suicide Squeeze Records for their third album Darkness Rains in 2018. This move unlocked the bands potential taking their raw low-fi garage punk sound into high quality recording and production with more resources to express their vision. Under The Spell of Joy brings the band to a new level with the best songwriting and most pop friendly sound integrating sounds from 1980’s, punk, pop, alternative and psychedelic genres.

Death Valley Girls Under The Spell of Joy is my favorite Death Valley Girls album and it reveals many potential pathways for the future sound of the band. The album feels like a transition in the bands sound moving further from the all-out driven rock approach to more diverse songwriting and cleaner more complex aesthetic.

The tonal quality of the album is very high every instrument has clear full sound without loosing the gritty raw rock style of the band. The mix and master makes for dynamic songs focused on the oevrall tones rather then a guitar forward approach with smashing drums heard on the previous albums. The guitar explores thinner vintage tones that walk the thin line between clean and dirty, Vintage and modern. The sound has a retro feel that is as much 1960’s as it is 1980s and 1990s.