Video: Death Valley Girls, ‘Disaster (Is What We’re After)’
Daiana Feuer on
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“Death Valley Girls are a gift to the world,” says Iggy Pop, who stars in the Kansas Bowling-directed video for “Disaster (Is What We’re After),” the first single from DVG’s third studio album, “Darkness Rains.” The video recreates a scene from Danish filmmaker Jorgen Leth’s 1981 art movie “66 Scenes From America” in which Andy Warhol eats a hamburger. Much like the original, which took Warhol a little over four minutes, Iggpy Pop eats the burger in the same manner, dipping it in ketchup, removing half the bun, and at the end announces himself to the camera.
As for the song, it dives deeper into the mystical proto-punk stylings that made 2016’s “Glow In The Dark” a darkly engaging, alien-friendly delight, with a great chorus of voices that join the incantation and nice untangling of all the instruments at the song’s end, which includes some unexpected brass.
Where their last album revolved around the idea that enlightened earth people can be identified by their glow in the dark, “Darkness Rains” aims to inculcate those who need a shift in consciousness, folks who need to tune in to the interconnection of all beings in life and death. “Songs come from beyond and other worlds, you just have to tune into the right radio wave signal to dial them in. Our signal happens to be in a 1970 Dodge Charger Spaceship,” says Larry Schemel, one-half of DVG’s core. The other half is squeaky siren Bonnie Bloomgarden, who channels a message of love and gratitude with the conviction of a possessed soul crawling on the ceiling. “Learn from the stars and beyond!” she (and he) adds. “Be happy and thankful we got to live together on Earth at the same time! And death is just a shift — stay alive and awake.”
The rest of the album’s ensemble includes bassist Alana Amram, drummer Laura Harris, and guests Shannon Lay, former drummer The Kid, aka Laura Kelsey, and members of The Make Up, The Shivas and Moaning. The album comes out Oct. 5 via Suicide Squeeze.
||| Watch: “Disaster (Is What We’re After)”
||| Live: Death Valley Girls perform Sept. 13 at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown (tickets) and Oct. 3 at Teragram Ballroom (tickets).
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