As promised, we’ve been rolling out sets from our 2015 SXSW showcase every so often since it went down in March. Following Cancer Bats, Aaron Lee Tasjan, and B. Dolan, here are a few clips from Death Valley Girls’ set, which kicked off with the second giant pizza delivery, a bit of rain, and a visit from a mysterious bearded beer fairy. More clips are available on our YouTube channel.
Death Valley Girls were the perfect band for this slot, even more so in practice than in theory. In a steroidal mega festival like SXSW where just a little too much is driven by slick marketing and corporate-backed brand positioning, we always try to focus on throwing a party, a good one, modeled after the parties we were blacking out at while the guys behind the Spotify House™ were still working on their MBAs. Death Valley Girls feel like the not necessarily safe, but ultimately for-fun gangs we all would form with only the coolest of our friends, before 1992 when we kind of had to stop throwing that word around so much. They follow in the footsteps of The Runaways, 70s Hollywood, grindhouse cinema, Switchblade Sisters and Rock N’ Roll High School.
As the rain started to pour down, as our buzzes started crossing the line over to drunk, as the pizza guy arrived to sloppy applause, the kids that sit in the back of the class and know where all the bad things are took the stage, turned the ignition of a garage punk Firebird, and let the perfect soundtrack blast through the PA.
Currently, Death Valley Girls are taking a rare break from touring to work on their follow up to their 2014 debut Street Venom. You can start following them through their Facebook, and/or snag their releases from Bandcamp. We’ll be sharing new music as it comes.
