Deap Vally at The Echoplex 10/30/2018

After national and international tours opening for Wolf Mother, Garbage and Blondie the girls of Deap Vally returned to the place they call home for a headlining show at The Echcoplex in L.A. 

It was the night before Halloween and costumed concert goers slowly trickled into the dark venue. I learned when I got there that it would be a late show with second openers of the night, The Paranoyds going at 9:30, Deap Vally would play closer to 10:30. Dressed as cockroaches, The Paranoyds offered surf rock jams with a Twilight Zone twist. People filled the space close to the stage and before long it was time for Deap Vally. 

Deap Vally at The Echoplex 10/30/2018
photo by Nikki DeMartini

I read somewhere that the Deap Vally girls hadn't played a headlining show in L.A for a while and the last few times I was them was when they played in San Francisco so it was awesome to catch a rare, hometown show of theirs. Another fun fact about their show at The Echoplex, a venue that reminded me a lot of The Independent in SF only bigger, was that The Rolling Stones played there in 2013. So before they even started, I knew this place knows how to host a rock show and Deap Vally knows how to rock so we were in for a rockin' good time at The Echoplex. 

Buoyant cheers rose from the chatter in the crowd as Lindsey and Julie took their places on stage: Lindsey front and center with Julie kitty corner to her stage right. One of the things I love so much about Deap Vally is that it's just the two of them and they rock so hard. In a time where almost all music is auto-tuned and over produced, my musical tasted was formed in the age of The White Stripes. I'm inherently drawn to the grungy style of blues duets that rock as hard as bands like The Kills and Deap Vally do. The fact that Deap Vally are two girls makes it that much more badass.

They were both in the Halloween spirit that night: Lindsey dressed as Wonder Woman and Julie as Daryl Hannah's character from the original Blade Runner, Priscilla "Pris" Stratton. A friend donning KISS face-paint joined them on stage at first, lending some back up vocals to Lindsey's predominate wailing. 

A loud, distracting buzz coming from one of the speakers during the first few songs of the set which I attributed to being a blown speaker turned out to be a bad guitar cord. After stopping mid-song during "Smile More" to work out the technical difficulty they decided to play without the cord and the sound was much better after that. 

They played favorites from Femejism including "Little Baby Beauty Queen", "Royal Jelly," "Teenaage Queen" and a song from the album they've never played live before, "Critic". It was stripped down and slowed down allowing you to hear Lindsey's vocals being summoned deep from her diaphragm. The times that I have seen them since the September 16th, 2016 release of their second album (Femejism) and even before that, their set-lists consist of songs from it and usually one song from their first album (Sistrionix) "Walk Of Shame." They played two songs from that album at their show at The Echoplex that night, "Walk Of Shame" and "Make My Own Money." They also played a new single that was released this Summer, the guitar riff driven "Bring It On". 

Friends joined them on-stage through out the show playing bongos and backing lead vocals and a silver bodysuit clad T-Rex danced around the stage during the last song which everyone fully enjoyed. Deap Vally's rock N roll spirit on the eve of all Hallows Eve was a fun treat. There aren't too many shows left on their West Coast Fall Tour but they're rumored to be working on a new album which means we'll likely be seeing Deap Vally again soon.