Deap Vally - Smile More

Any woman in the entire world who has ever walked down a drizzly street on a particularly shit-filled day, or worked the late-shift at a bar full of creeps, and been instructed to “give us a smile, love” by a total stranger will be bobbing like a sherbert-fuelled nodding dog at Deap Vally’s ‘Smile More’. Over curling riffs that reach out like sucker-punching tentacles, and pummelling, angry thuds, Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards seize hold of the record, and shout their feminism loud and proud from the rooftops.

“Stranger in the bar tells me to smile more, I look at him and ask him what for? I am happily unhappy, man,” drawls Troy, her voice dripping with venom and frustration. Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner only adds extra bite still from behind the production desk. Deap Vally have always sounded massive, but on ‘Smile More’ they’re in another league of badass.