Straight Arrows

(Sydney, AUSTRALIA // Agitated Records)

Facebook ⎮ Bandcamp

THE JUDGES

(Melbourne, Australia // Anti Fade Records)

ANT – 093 THE JUDGES – Judgement Day PR

Instagram ⎮ Bandcamp

CLAMM

(MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA // MEAT MACHINE/ CHAPTER MUSIC)

Melbourne punk trio CLAMM explore the confusion of what it is to be a young person trying to live an honourable life in this fucked up world. Their songs are about trying to navigate systems of power and oppression while retaining a healthy sense of self and mental health. Community, creativity, and catharsis are what they hope to achieve through their music.

They released second album Care in August 2022, via Australian indie institution Chapter Music and UK label Meat Machine. Full of blown-out, dystopian punk power, Care found Double J rotation, was feature album on RRR, PBS, ZZZ, and saw the band score a Spotlight Artist feature on BBC 6 Music with Steve Lamacq. The album reached #4 in the AIR Charts and #19 in the ARIA Australian Albums charts and was written up by the likes of Chicago Reader, NME, Paste, Music Feeds, DIY Mag and Dusted.

CLAMM’s 2020 debut album Beseech Me was a Triple R and FBI Radio feature album and sold out its original cassette pressing almost immediately. It was reissued on vinyl in 2021 by Meat Machine (renowned as the home for Canadian art-punk provocateurs Crack Cloud), which saw CLAMM featured on the cover of French
Rolling Stone and played on BBC 6 Music.

In Australia the band has played with Wolf Alice, Ty Segall, King Gizzard, Amyl & the Sniffers, the Chats and the Murlocs, and played festivals like Melbourne Music Week, Tentpole and Do the Pop. CLAMM toured UK/Europe in August 2022, again in February 2023 for shows with A Place To Bury Strangers and
Preoccupations, and return for a run of UK/Europe summer festival shows in May 2023 including Wide Awake, Levitation and Badd Bonn.

In late 2022 bassist Maisie Everett departed the band, and new member Stella Rennex (Parsnip, Thibault, The Toads) joined the fold.

“CLAMM may not be the first group to venture out into the fuzzy Australian wilderness, but…they might just be the best.” – DIY Mag
“CLAMM’s storm of cathartic energy disguises how intricately constructed the songs are…both exhilarating and engaging.” – All Music

Facebook ⎮Bandcamp

DION LUNADON

(New York, USA // In The Red Records)

Born in Auckland, New Zealand and now residing in New York City, Dion has played in various bands, most notably The D4, who released two albums on legendary New Zealand label Flying Nun Records and A Place To Bury Strangers, appearing and writing on their studio albums Worship (2012) Transfixiation (2015) and Pinned (2018) as well as numerous singles and EPs. He also played in the formidable Flowers Of Evil beside members of Crocodiles.

While taking a break from touring with A Place To Bury Strangers, Lunadon recorded a self-titled solo album encompassing all that he loves about rock ’n’ roll. Previewed by the single »Com/Broke, » Lunadon’s LP arrived in 2017 on Agitated Records.

Just as the pandemic hit early 2020, Lunadon decided to leave A Place To Bury Strangers and focus on his own music. In June 2020, he released the song “When Will I Hold You Again”, a duet with Kate Clover, and September 2020 saw the release of the “Schreien” EP.

In 2021 he put a band together to give his songs life and in 2022 Henry Rollins got him in touch with In The Red Records who released his sophomore album Beyond Everything.

November 14th 2023 saw In The Red releasing his 3rd album, Systems Edge.

Facebook ⎮ Bandcamp

Death Valley Girls

(Los Angeles, USA /// Suicide Squeeze Records)

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 of love and acceptance to myself, but also from every self to every self, because we are all one!”

If this sounds too cerebral or esoteric, don’t worry. At its core, Islands in the Sky is a party—a riotous, danceable, sing-a-long celebration of life, love, and mystery. The bulk of the album was channeled into being when Bloomgarden and drummer Rikki Styxx went out to a cabin in the California woods on New Years Day 2022 to hunker down and harness the songs from the ether. Further bolstered by Larry 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, as evidenced in the song’s confession “I’m still in love with you.” 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, all while channeling the pomp and swagger of ‘90s big-budget rockers like Elastica and Garbage. 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. From there we have “Sunday,” which uses the swirling organ, soulful vocals, emotional bombast, and the hip-shaking climax of a classic Percy Sledge tune as a foundation to Bloomgarden’s lyrical examination of coping with the struggles of her past. Still not a convert? Just one spin of “What Are the Odds” and you’ll be singing along with the chorus of “we are living in a simulated world, and we are simulated girls.”

On side B, the self-empowerment song-talisman of “When I’m Free” makes a reappearance after initially showing up in late 2021 on a split 7” with Le Butcherettes and getting a scorching remix treatment from Peaches in early 2022. The fall 2021 digital single “It’s All Really Kind of Amazing” closes out the album, serving as a reminder that all the answers to all the secrets are already inside you. Fittingly, Bloomgarden states that the soaring finale to Islands in the Sky “was fully 100% channeled from my guides to remind me even when everything seems shitty in the world, and it doesn’t seem fair to be happy about anything, the earth and the universe are still really amazing.”

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.

KEXP| Facebook