Death Valley Girls
Under the Spell of Joy
Release Date: Oct 2, 2020
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Suicide Squeeze
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Album Review: Under the Spell of Joy by Death Valley Girls
Very Good, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 7.7/10
Death Valley Girls ringleader Bonnie Bloomgarden has said that her band's initial bucket-list goal was to meet Iggy Pop. On their first two albums--2016's Glow in the Dark and 2018's Darkness Rains--they set the bait, in the form of sassy, saxy garage rock that hit the sweet spot between the Stooges and Shangri-Las. The gambit worked: Not only has Iggy given the group his blessing (calling them "a gift to the world"), he starred in the video for their 2018 single "Disaster (Is What We're After)," spending its entire four-minute runtime chowing down on a cheeseburger with pure Warholian ambivalence.
Based on rating 7
'Under The Spell Of Joy' lives up to its name. It's 38-minutes of infectious guitars, mesmerising melodies and choruses that genuinely make you sing along. It is the album that we all need, but didn't realise we wanted. 'Little Things' feels like a mixture of The Langley School Project, Broken Belles and The Shaggs.
Based on rating 7/10
Under the Spell of Joy shares a name with the 2014 album by San Diego hard rockers JOY - and it's no coincidence. Bloomgarden decided that the title of the record would be a tribute to a JOY t-shirt she wore for five years straight, after coming to see it as some kind of good luck charm, a talisman of sorts. The title, emblazoned on the shirt, represented "manifesting your biggest dreams and responding thoughtfully and mindfully to everything that comes in your path with joy and compassion first," Bloomgarden explains in the press release.
Based on rating 7/10
Under the Spell of Joy is a nourishing elixir. One tablespoon psych-rock, two cups of saxophone, some notes of a children’s choir, and one heaping serving of boundless, but sublime euphoria. Perhaps necessitated by a pervasive need to create a new reality, Death Valley Girls have donned their album a “space-gospel.” But, despite having an almost dreamlike undercurrent, Under the Spell of Joy is bewitchingly in touch with its humanity.
Based on rating 3.5
The omens are good at the launching of this, the fourth proper album, by Bonnie Bloomgarden and her melodious sisters. Death Valley Girls have not strayed too far from the template they set themselves, one of an oft-laborious duality of obnoxious romantic insouciance and drug fuelled cavernous emptiness. Admittedly they can sometimes come across more Tumblr than Tumbling Dice, but it's not without allure.
'Under the Spell of Joy'
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