SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: DEAP VALLY – SISTRIONIX 2.0

DEAP VALLY
SISTRIONIX 2.0
INDEPENDENT

While Deap Vally drummer Julie Edwards was teaching a crochet class in LAs’ Silver Lake in the early 2010s, she was surprised at how her new friend and soon-to-be bandmate Lindsey Troy was so adept at working with her fingers. Of course, she was extremely talented. Just listen to how she fingerpicks guitar strings, making it sound as if there is more than one guitar player in their humble but damn loud duo. Their art of ferocious weaving of riff-crazy landscapes was already more than obvious back in 2013 on their debut record, Sistrionix, and it’s still the same on its grown-up twin sister Sistrionix 2.0. This new version of the band’s well-known first effort, re-recorded in the vein of Taylor Swift and supplemented with new material, loudly closes their 13-year-long run along with the last tour.

For more than a decade, Deap Vally, alongside Royal Blood, Band of Skulls, and a few more bands, remained an endangered species of true MVPs of that old-fashioned Jack White-tinged blues-rock sound, blended with vigorous youthfulness and a touch of indie. It’s perfectly seen on their new and latest record, Sistrionix 2.0, which completes the full circle of their oeuvre and maybe even of the whole genre. The buoyant opener “End Of The World”, as well as all the other cuts, if we listen to them right after the original versions, graphically show us from the get-go how not only their personal sound but also the whole scuzzy garage phenomenon of the early 2000s has evolved over the last decade from sparse guitar licks and flat lo-fi sonics to a broad palette of even more guitar-driven sound with a hailstorm of the raucous energy.

On “Gonna Make My Own Money”, it’s clearly noticeable how drum parts began to sound more distinct and confident in comparison with its original. “Your Love”, where thumping drums are also prominently present, shows us the transformation of an indistinct guitar part of the previous version into a roaring chainsaw on steroids. All of that connects with mantra-like and stadium-worthy squeals in “Baby I Call Hell” and many other album cuts, making them the perfect material for live shows. Here and there on Sistrionix 2.0, we can hear Karen O and Alison Mosshart style ad-libs and vocal modulations, along with very The Black Keys-like bluesy guitar licks. Let’s not mention Led Zeppelin and other more obvious stuff, but it’s all there — processed, recycled, and digested into a kick-ass sound.

To put it in their own words from “Ain’t Fair”, “Oh, oh, that’s how it goes / It ain’t fair, it ain’t fair, it ain’t fair”. Certainly, it ain’t fair to lose such a ferocious band right in the middle of their evolution. I even dare to assume that Furiosa from the Mad Max saga would love their totally wild approach to sound. At the same time, their lyrics were not always very sprawling and delicately penned, and if we compare those from Sistrionix 2.0 to, say, Marriage or Femejism, there are even fewer words. “Gonna take a walk of shame / Baby, I don’t feel no blame”, they sing in “Walk of Shame”. “The old man, was a young man once”, they claim in “Spiritual”. Well, indeed! It’s hard to disagree, and also very easy to yell in front of the stage.

However, in spite of quite minimalistic, raw, and direct songwriting, their chants serve as a perfect basis for, er, “ventilator blues”, as Edwards and Troy themselves put it. According to the lyrics of the eponymous song, this is the kind of music “When your spine is cracking and your hands they shake/Heart is burstin’ and your butt’s gonna break”. Indeed, again! They play exactly the kind of music that is capable of breaking any butt in the world.

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