Islands in the Sky
“Death Valley Girls are a gift to the world.” - Iggy Pop “Harnessing the allure of the occult and the power of self-help, the Los Angeles garage rockers break free from their roots and ascend to the realm of spiritual psych-jazz rockestra.” - Pitchfork “(Death Valley Girls) taps out of traditional songwriting and tune into a new spiritual consciousness…” - SPIN “An insistent Banshees like boom and groove.” - MOJO For the better part of a decade, LA’s scrappy rock n’ roll mystics Death Valley Girls have used their music as a means of tapping into a communal cosmic energy. On albums like Glow In The Dark (2016), Darkness Rains (2018), and Under the Spell of Joy (2020) the band challenged the soul-crushing banality of modern society and celebrated “true magical infinite potential” through a collage of scorching proto-punk riffs, earworm melodies, far-out lyrics, and lysergic auxiliary instrumentation. But on their latest album Islands in the Sky, Death Valley Girls’ songwriting mastermind Bonnie Bloomgarden uses the band’s anthemic revelries as a guidebook to spiritual healing and a roadmap for future incarnations of the self. And while these may be the loftiest aims of Death Valley Girls to date, the resulting music is also by far their most infectious and celebratory.
Death Valley Girls have collectively crafted a record worthy of their dusty Californian roots on Islands In The Sky, an album which is a step up from any previous works featuring some of their most infectious jaunts.