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... 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. The seeds for Islands in the Sky were planted while Bloomgarden was bed-ridden with a mysterious illness from November 2020 to March 2021. "When I was sick I had to sleep most of the day. I kept waking up every few hours with an intense message to take care of the island, feed the island...I have no idea why, but making music for the island kept coming up." Before her illness, Bloomgarden's primary focus was writing songs to help other people deal with their own suffering. But something in her shifted, and she began to turn her focus inward. "When I was sick I started to wonder if it would be possible to write a record with messages of love to my future self. This was really the first time that I consciously thought about my own suffering and what future me might need to hear to heal. I struggled so much in my life with mental health, abuse, PTSD, and feeling like I didn't belong anywhere. And I don't want anyone-including my future self-to suffer ever again. I realized that if we are all part of one cosmic consciousness, as we [Death Valley Girls] believe, then Islands in the Sky could serve not only as a message to her future self but also as a message to anyone who might need it. With the dual powers of Harry Schemel's guitar prowess and the addition of new bassist and co-lead singer Sammy Westervelt, Death Valley Girls set out to make their most ambitious and exciting record to date at Station House Studio in Echo Park. Islands in the Sky opens with a patient, hazy, aura fueled synth, organ, and Schemel's dusty guitar twang on "California Mountain Shake"-a love song to our future selves. The slow-burn yields to "Magic Powers," where Death Valley Girls teach us how to harness the hard times, abuse, and feelings of being alone, abandoned, or powerless in your life into magic powers. This segues into the title track, an anthem fully deserving of having an entire album share its name. Imagine Rush's "Freewill" without the math but with an even more triumphant chorus and an openness to otherworldly possibilities. Suicide Squeeze is proud to release Death Valley Girls' Islands in the Sky to the world on vinyl, CD, cassette, and DSPs in early 2023.
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