There’s no place like home. In the case of the Acid Sisters, there’s no place like the desert. It took leaving Las Vegas for Elayna (vocals) and Nick Thompson (guitar) to realize they were homesick, aching for the tight-knit community they once had. On Neon Graveyard, the psychedelic rock band’s first LP in six years, that yearning can be felt as much as it’s heard.
“Everything I was writing, all of my inspiration was the Nevada desert, Las Vegas and this weird bubble we live in,” says Elayna. “This city is like no other. We live in the middle of a desert. There shouldn’t be life here. There’s still nuclear activity in the dirt. Yet, I love this place.”
The husband-and-wife duo currently lives in Los Angeles for work, while the rest of the Sisters—Jacob Savage (drums), Lizzie Schieb (keys) and Steve Cooper (bass)—reside in Las Vegas. Regardless, the band’s chemistry remains electric, as evidenced on Neon Graveyard.
“It just seems more natural, and we’re definitely having more fun doing it,” Elayna says of the album Savage mixed and recorded. “The best thing ever is when we all just jam out and we create a whole song all in one sitting. The majority of the songs were that.”
The desert itself seems to whistle through these tracks, conjuring the sounds of spooky ghost towns and old spaghetti western wastelands. Riffs howl and bend like the wind here, hooks gallop, steed-like and spirited. And much of that, Nick and Elayna ascribe to vintage gear and Savage’s unorthodox methods—like having Elayna sing into a telephone he turned into a microphone on “Green Die.”
The Acid Sisters have certainly come a long way. The Thompsons and Cooper are now parents; Savage and Schieb are now married. Essentially, the band has grown up together.
“I think it, in a way, has brought us a little bit closer to feeling like we’re our own little family,” Nick says.
Fans won’t have to wait as long between projects again, he says. They’re recording as they go, eager to release more music as significant as Neon Graveyard.
“It felt good to look back on this album and really feel like it’s an ode to Las Vegas,” Nick says. “We met each other there. We met the band there and spent 13 years there. Listening to it now, it feels like a Vegas album.”
THE ACID SISTERS linktr.ee/theacidsisters
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