A record that feels like it's taking you somewhere new, Under the Spell of Joy, the new one from Death Valley Girls, is also one of this week's most significant releases. Bonnie Bloomgarden and her band have crafted something cool here, and it's something that really sounds unlike lots else in the indie world at the moment. The Suicide Squeeze offering surprised me a lot.
While some of this sounds, roughly, like Sister-era Sonic Youth, the whole thing really recalls a few dozen of your favorite bands and utterly none of them. "Hold Your Hand" and "Under the Spell of Joy" seem like the sort of thing Strawberry Switchblade would make if they were still around to team up with Vivian Girls, you know? Elsewhere, even while "The Universe" offers up a straightforward sort of blissful rock, "Hey Dena" and "The Universe" strike out for the kind of drone-y territory covered by both early Psychedelic Furs and Nineties-era Yo La Tengo.
Those comparisons above are lazy ones, yes, but it's worth the effort to sort of at least clumsily point towards what this sounds like. At their very best, like on the pushy "I'd Rather Be Dreaming", Death Valley Girls take things back to the distant past, whipping up Sixties girl group-stuff up with Nuggets-ish organ-based hooks to really entirely fuck with your head. Hypnotic, seductive, and melodic as hell, Under the Spell of Joy really blew my mind when I wasn't expecting anything this special. Dig it!
Under the Spell of Joy is out on Friday via Suicide Squeeze.
More details on Death Valley Girls via the band's official Facebook page.
[Photo: www.davidfearn.com]