Deap Vally – Sistrionix
The Deap Vally girls could only come from California. You just can’t get away with hot-panted hard-rock these days if you hail from anywhere else. And don’t let their attire (or lack of) force you into stereotyping this primitive blues-rock duo either, for Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards are most definitely for real. Every track on Sistrionix is attacked like they’re having the times of their lives – it’s just that it gets warm on stage, alright.
As eye-catching a girl-girl combo then as comes to mind, Troy and Edwards nevertheless let their songs do most of the talking. And, in Troy, Deap Vally has a true rock star in its midst, wheeling, for example, between a creepy croon and full-blown Robert Plant wail on last year’s empowering single “Gonna Make My Own Money”. Providing variety, the classy closer “Six Feet Under” later casts her into simmering Janis Joplin country, fraying the template with passages of outright distortion.
“Come on everybody. Listen up.” So Troy begins the killer “End Of The World” and pay attention you will come the track’s buzz-saw axe-work and Edwards’ muscular drum part – there are certainly worse ways to embrace apocalypse. Suffice it to say then that if the pair had you at hello, you’ll be head over heels soon after. The booty-shaking jams just keep coming, tumbling into one another.
The chugging “Creeplife” is thrown down like a gauntlet. The sludgy single, “Lies”, squalls and squawks likes Karen O preaching on the subject of girl power. “Bad For My Body” could be QOTSA as tackled by the original Black Sabbath WAGS. The stop-start jerk to “Walk Of Shame” ( “I don’t feel no blame” ) is ripped straight from the annals of Jack White , its lack of fussy production lending it a really raw quality to play off against Troy’s bubblegum squeaks – a sweet and sour concoction that stylistically, if not musically, brings Jemina Pearl of Be Your Own Pet ‘s spiky solo work to mind.
Far from reinventing the wheel, and those sensitive to the re-treading of sacred ground would be laughably off course to investigate it at any great length, it’s hard not be taken in by the girls’ enthusiasm and ear for great hooks all the same. Either way, if there’s more fun to be had this year than Sistrionix – with or without hotpants involved – then count yourself very lucky indeed.
Advised downloads: “Gonna Make My Own Money” and “End Of The World”.
~Sistrionix is released June 24th 2013 on Island/Communion .~