Iggy Pop eats a fast-food hamburger in the video for Death Valley Girls’ “Disaster (Is What We’re After),” a song from the Los Angeles band’s third and most recent album, 2018’s Darkness Rains. The video is shot in one take, the camera static as it captures Iggy’s reactions to both the burger and the song, which is the latest example of the Death Valley Girls’ psyched-out Garage Rock — or, as they call it, “California Doom Boogie.”
“I’m Iggy Pop, and I just ate burger listening to Death Valley Girls,” the singer says matter-of-factly as the music concludes.
The video is an homage to a 1982 short by Danish filmmaker Jorgen Leth that featured Andy Warhol eating a fast-food burger. It’s a curious choice for a video topic, but it’s completely in line with Death Valley Girls’ interest in reviving counterculture touchstones, from Rock & Roll to art-trash connoisseurs like John Waters.
Fueled by frontperson Bonnie Bloomgarden’s shrieking vocals and guitarist Larry Schemel’s heavy riffage, Death Valley Girls is a kaleidoscopic trip through Garage Rock eras; the band’s three full-length albums revel in reverb and atmospheric menace, recalling everyone from old-school icons like The Stooges and Black Sabbath to such contemporaries as L7 and The Black Angels.
“To us, Rock & Roll is everything,” Bloomgarden said in a recent interview with narcmagazine.com. “It’s our life’s blood. Whatever people want to call it — Rock, Punk, Garage, Heavy Metal, Psychedelic … it’s all Rock & Roll and it’s the universal language to make people want to dance, scream and have a good time all the time!”
Death Valley Girls play a free show at MOTR Pub this Sunday with Moonwalks and Still Witches. Earlier this week the group released a new music video for their song “Dream Cleaver.”
This article appears in Aug 7-14, 2019.
