Deap Vally: They Rock, They Roll, They Give Birth
We are in the Yahoo Music studios in Santa Monica with Deap Vally, a two-piece rock group whose sound, like their name, is unique, off-kilter, and not like anything you’ve heard before. Additionally, their drummer is expecting to give birth within the next two weeks. This sort of thing rarely happens. With drummers, that is.
“Everything’s like a perfect storm in life,” says pregnant drummer and maraca shaker Julie Edwards, re-explaining Deap Vally’s origins yet again. “And I did have a knitting shop, and Lindsey did come in to learn how to crochet, and at that time I had been thinking about doing something that was only women. We had a first jam with Ashley Dzerigian, who’s like a great bass player, it was awesome–but then Ashley was always too busy. That’s kind of the reason why we became a two-piece.”
Photo: Lisa Aileen Dragani (See more photos here)
Her other half, guitarist/singer Lindsey Troy, points over at Edwards’ midsection and smiles. “This way there’s kind of three.”
The very loud, very colorful, and starkly creative pair that comprises Deap Vally are visiting us during an interesting point in their career. Their debut album of 2013, Sistrionix, was well received but is now over and done with; they managed to tour the world and play festivals all over because of it, and now it’s time for a follow-up.
At this precise moment, the band can offer up “Royal Jelly” and “Little Baby Beauty Queen”—two fine songs, produced with the assistance of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner, offering a fascinating preview of an album due to emerge next year. “He really pushed us a lot,” says guitarist Troy, “to just write our best songs and just kind of go out of our of comfort zone a little bit.”
If the visual stimulation offered up by the Deap Vally duo themselves isn’t enough, the new video for “Royal Jelly” should be: It features the band’s friend Georgia May Jagger, a striking model whose father is that famous vocalist for the Rolling Stones you’ve likely heard of.
“Georgia’s a friend of ours,” says Edwards. “She’s like a superstar model, she works all the time, she’s like 100 percent pro, we met her in Chicago, at a show we played there, and she just like digs what we do, and she’s been so supportive. And we were like, ‘Hey, would you ever want to be in a video? You’re so amazing, would you be in one of our videos?’ And she was like, ‘I’d be honored to be in a video.’
“And so we were both kind of dorky and really excited about doing it together.”
As the video indicates, and the performances in our studio indicate even more, Deap Vally are a fascinating pair, offering a unique musical perspective merging ‘70s metal with ‘80s punk with ‘90s irony with ‘00s complete disregard for all prior context with ‘10s earnest desire to simply make a living and…they are really very good at it.
Just take a look; just give a listen.
