In the year 2023 there’s no shortage of songs about mental health, however there is always a need for songs that feel like they talk honestly about mental health and that is what Death Valley Girls are here to give us. When discussing new single ‘Sunday’ the lead, Bonnie Bloomgarden, said that “Over the past few years I learned you have to feel and move through your feelings or they get stuck, and then you become a vessel or container for all the feelings you are trying to avoid! If you acknowledge, feel, and process them, you get to release and move them out of you! This song is to honour that process!” and the way the song is written perfectly represents this.
Described as garage rock, ‘Sunday’ manages to pay tribute to rock and grunge music of the 90s with their guitar tones and styles as well as in the drum beat while still maintaining their uniqueness by having a saxophone solo in the middle of the song. It was one of the most interesting and unexpected things I have heard in music recently, however Death Valley Girls somehow managed to make it perfectly fit in with their style, even leading into the faster feeling and punchier finale of the song. This entire instrumental seems to work as a way to show the process, by starting off slower with a focus on organs and being a lot simpler until it builds into a more fun backing, which makes the listener want to dance and celebrate. Especially once it has all built up to the end and there is the full band playing as well as the saxophone and the backing vocals, which all work together to create a really fun and full sounding ending.
As for the vocals, there are very few people, especially women, singing like this in modern music. They sound very similar to how many people would sing in grunge and punk music from the 90s, which does fit the music and what seems to be the band’s influences. Also, the lyrics reflect the same thing that the instrumental does, by starting off talking about their issues and begging for a sign, but by the end saying that “I gotta move on”. Throughout the whole song there feels like there is a real honesty to it, you can tell that the issues discussed are real and that this process is something that Bloomgarden has really gone through. This honesty is something I cannot wait to hear more of in their new album ‘Islands In The Sky’, out February 24th via Suicide Squeez Records.