New music review with singles from Death Valley Girls, Jawdropped and The Tullamarines
Our weekly fix of the best new music as Julia Mason (aka The Decibel Decoder) brings us her new music review with singles from Death Valley Girls Message from the Venus Flower, Jawdropped Cup and The Tullamarines Flight Path
Artist: Death Valley Girls
Track: Message from the Venus Flower
Death Valley Girls are a staple of the Southern California rock scene. The city's devastating wildfires provide heart wrenching inspiration for their new full-length, Welcome to Earth, after destroying lead singer Bonnie Bloomgarden's home in Altadena. The record is set for release October 9 via Suicide Squeeze Records. Today, the band share the lead single, Message From the Venus Flower alongside a video directed by punk legend Ian Svenonius. Over a funky, '80s inspired instrumental, Bloomgarden mourns the loss of her beloved dog while celebrating their spiritual connection. It finds boisterousness in tragedy.
On the video, she elaborates: "Ian Svenonius is one of my favorite artists! His writing, music, taste, and ethos are genius! He’s a legend of innovation and is always evolving exponentially while still referencing essential splashes of the past with sincere reverence. Yet, somehow is always peak ultra modern! What he and Sandy Denton have created in the scene with the Rated Z Dancers is breathtaking. I can’t believe they agreed to make a video for us!!"
The road to Death Valley Girls’ Welcome to Earth begins in the ashes of California’s Eaton Fire. After losing her home in Altadena and soon after her beloved dog Tommy, lead singer and songwriter Bonnie Bloomgarden confronted questions that resisted easy answers: What survives catastrophe? What remains after loss? How do you rebuild a life when the things that once defined it are gone? The album that emerged from those questions is among the most intimate and searching works Death Valley Girls have ever made. What emerged was not a psych-punk record about loss, exactly, but about connection: the invisible threads linking people, animals, memories, landscapes, and lives across time. The album's title functions as both a greeting and a reminder, a welcome from the natural world to a species that has largely forgotten its place within it. Again and again, the songs return to the possibility that separation may be humanity's most persistent illusion.
That idea of connection extends beyond the songs themselves. After the fire, Bloomgarden found herself held aloft by the musicians who now make up Death Valley Girls: drummer Bailey Chapman, guitarist Laena Myers, bassist Alana Amram, saxophonist Sarah Safaie, and keyboardist Gregg Foreman - who devastatingly passed away not long after. They carried her through grief, through the band's first tour after the loss, and a year for her to be ready to write again. Their presence shaped not only the spirit of Welcome to Earth, but its sound: a more expansive, communal energy that feels inseparable from the people who helped bring it into being. "I don't think this record could have been made with any other group of people," Bloomgarden shares. Tragically, the album also stands as the final Death Valley Girls recording to feature Gregg's contributions.
Death Valley Girls Live Dates
October
9 - Los Angeles, CA @ Scribble (RECORD RELEASE SHOW)
22 - Tourcoing, FR @ Le Grand Mix
23 - Brighton, UK @ Mutations Festival
24 - Manchester, UK @ The Abbey
25 - Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
26 - Newcastle, UK @ The Cluny
27 - Birmingham, UK @ TBA
28 - London, UK @ The Lexington
30 - Oviedo, SP @ Lata de Zinc
31 - Valencia, SP @ 16 Toneladas
November
3 - Utrecht, NL @ dB's
4 - Berlin, DE @ LIDO
5 - Hamburg, DE @ Molotow
6 - Metz, FR @ Les Trinitaires
7 - Luzern, CH @ Südpol Club
12 - Belfort, FR @ La Poudrière
13 - Nimes, FR @ Paloma
14 - Argenteuil, FR @ La Cave
17 - Cherbourg, FR @ Le Circuit
18 - Bordeaux, FR @ Krakatoa
19 - Paris, FR @ Maroquinerie
20 - La Rochelle, FR @ La Siréne
21 - Rouen, FR @ Le 106
* * *
Artist: Jawdropped
Track: Cup
Jawdropped have released Cup, the driving new single from the LA band’s debut album Secret To Spare set for release on 18 September via Transgressive Records / Canvasback. Of the song, the band says: "The idea for Cup actually came from an older song of ours called Star. We wanted to write about this same character who moves to LA with stars in their eyes, only to see themselves burnout. It's about getting swept up in the ‘idea’ of a place, rather than the reality. Realising you're the last one at the party."
Secret to Spare at once feels classic and immediate - a pitch-perfect melange of big-hearted indie rock, the sour-sweet sounds of ‘90s alternative radio, and the shaggy-and-ragged sound of alt-country. At large, it is lyrically driven by what Zangari defines as “stories you’ve overheard as a barfly.”
“I’m always writing based off of things that I hear, or something that happened to a friend,” Morling explains regarding the blend of raconteurish-ness and interior voyeurism that makes up these twin lyricists’ POV. “L.A. is this destination that so many people move to with a dream of having this exciting life in the arts,” Zangari adds. “There's so many crazy people you meet across that spectrum of failure and success, and I'm really fascinated by those stories. But there's a self-reflective level too, because we're also playing that game. We’re no different than the failed actor that's working at the bar.”
Jawdropped Live Dates
September
21 - Chicago, IL @ Subterranean ^
22 - Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups *
23 - Indianapolis, IN @ Turntable *
October
2 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
8 - New York, NY @ Night Club 101
22 - Rotterdam, NL @ Left of the Dial Festival
23 - Rotterdam, NL @ Left of the Dial Festival
25 - Berlin, DE @ Urban Spree
27 - Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
28 - Gent, BE @ Ringo
30 - Sheffield, UK @ Alder
November
2 - London, UK @ Pitchfork London
3 - Southampton, UK @ Joiners
4 - Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade
6 - Nantes, FR @ Catapult Festival
7 - Paris, FR @ Pitchfork Paris
^ w/ Graham Hunt
* w/ This Is Lorelei
* * *
Artist: The Tullamarines
Track: Flight Path
Fresh from a run of standout UK live dates, including appearances at The Great Escape and Dot To Dot Festival; a support tour with The Lottery Winners; and their debut headline UK shows, The Tullamarines return with new single Flight Path - the first taste of an exciting new chapter for the hotly tipped Australian indie four-piece.
Honest, vulnerable and emotionally charged, the track delves into the quiet battles that often go unseen, transforming creative burnout, self-doubt and the overwhelming urge to retreat from the world into one of the band’s most affecting releases to date.
Speaking on the new single, Ben Waltho shares: "Flight Path is first and foremost about writer's block, but it’s framed in a few different ways. It’s actually the product of two very different demos that were merged in an effort to relieve a particularly long stretch of non-writing. This song is about so many things: losing confidence as you grow up, wanting to go home and hide from the world, struggling to be honest. It’s a very troubling mosaic of thoughts and feelings that bubble away in the background of life, coming to the surface all at once".
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