Death Valley Girls “Glow In the Dark” 2016. Burger Records. It’s International Women’s Day today so I’m spinning the second album from one of my favorite current female bands (well, there’s one dude but if the show we saw a couple of years ago is any indication, he mainly hangs in the background). Death Valley Girls are a proto-punk’d style swampy psychedelic “space-gospel” group that are seriously bad-ass. Shredding guitars, hard-driving beats, relentless ass-shaking grooves.  The album begins with the ripping title track “Glow in Dark,” goes madcap 60′s garage-psych on “Disco” speed-metal shreds the boogie on “Death Valley Boogie” and continuous the onslaught for “Seis Seis Seis.” Side 1 only slows down for the last track, the lovely, spacey harmonizing on the slow-burner “Pink Radiation.” On Side 2 Death Valley Girls put women front-and-center with the infectiously surfy “I’m a Man Too” (spoiler: they are not men and fucking proud of it), cast their witchy vibe on the darkly rocking “Love Spell,” go even darker on “Horror Movie,” make summer feel scary (in a good way!) on “Summertime” and wail out their garage rock blues on the final track “Wait For You.” There isn’t even a mediocre song on this record – Death Valley Girls are one of the best bands out there now, period.

Death Valley Girls at Romanus Fest, August 2019. One of the last music festivals we attended.