The Californian rock duo Deap Vally, formed in 2011 are fairly new to the music world. However despite their formative beginnings their playful and more than slightly raunchy rock and roll attitude together with giant bags of confidence they have managed to quickly rack up an impressive international fan base. Riding on the success of last year’s singles  ‘Gonna Make my Own Money’ and ‘End of the World’, the all female rock band have released their debut album, ‘Sistronix’. And after performing at the 2013 edition of Glastonbury festival, Julie Edwards hitting the drums like a madwoman and Lindsay Troy rocking the guitar and vocals, its sure that the duo knows how to entertain and perform.

But the album itself leaves a strong impression of déjà entendu. Time after time compared to The White Stripes and Led Zeppelin safe to say that the duo studied them well. So much so that if you’ve ever properly listened to The White Stripes or Led Zeppelin, ‘Sistronix’ is going to feel very “been there, done that”: Troy’s nonetheless beautifully raw voice screaming out lyrics, Stripes style, to early Led Zep-like riffs.

Deap Vally’s debut album opens on one of the duo’s previous single entitled ‘End of the World’ where similarities to Led Zeppelin’s infamous ‘Whole Lotta Love’ can be found. That’s a bit of karma for Led Zeppelin who shamelessly dabbled in music thievery in their early years too! But it doesn’t stop there, as well as building obvious parallels to the work of other bands; most of the songs on ‘Sistronix’ are also very similar to each other. It’s as if the material used for the staple songs of the album ‘End of the World”, ‘Baby I Can Hell’ and ‘Gonna Make My Own Money’ had been spread (too thin) over the length of a whole album.

All and all, ‘Sistronix’ is yet another commercial/instant fix summer release by Island Records.  Of course, with that kind of production, the sing along quality of the songs together with the power of their rendition seem to be just enough to hush away their lack of originality to the inattentive ears. I even found myself mindlessly humming the melodies of ‘Walk of Shame’ after listening to the album before going:“ Err… wait a second…” But however strongly I felt the album lacked in good old content, I think ‘Sistronix’ is a case of two talented musicians who just haven’t found their own style yet.  It takes a leather jackets, a pair of sunglasses and a can of beer to look rock n’ roll but it takes a bit more time to create a good record!