All Them Witches • L.A. Witch

15711 Waterloo Rd,Cleveland OH 44110

12 December, 2021

Description

All Them Witches • L.A. Witch ALL AGES All Them Witches L.A. WITCH All Them Witches perform at the Beachland Ballroom on Sunday, December 12 @ 8pm with L.A. Witch. PLEASE NOTE, COVID POLICY IN PLACE. SEE OUR SAFETY PAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION. This Way Out, our vintage and record store, will be open during the show. You do not need a show ticket to shop at This Way Out. All Them WitchesBy most fifth LPs, the band’s sound is pretty set. Parameters established. Refinement dissipated. You get a to-formula execution of what’s worked in the past. Fair enough. All Them Witches go a harder route. In 2017, the Nashville four-piece offered what might’ve otherwise become their own template in their fourth album (second for New West), Sleeping Through the War. It brought a larger production value thanks to oversight from producer Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Shooter Jennings, etc.), found them using choral vocals, expanded arrangements, bigger sounds than anything they’d done before. They could’ve easily fallen into a pattern of watered-down clones of that record. Easily. So naturally in a year they’ve thrown it all to the Appalachian wind, turned the process completely on its head and gone the other way: recording in a cabin in Kingston Springs, about 20 miles outside of Nashville on I-40, with guitarist Ben McLeod at the helm. Self-produced. Take that, expectation. The result, mixed by Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith, Kurt Vile), is the most intimate, human-sounding album All Them Witches have recorded and another redefinition of who they are as a band. Introducing keyboardist/percussionist Jonathan Draper to the fold with McLeod, bassist/vocalist Charles Michael Parks, Jr., and drummer/graphic artist Robby Staebler, All Them Witches’ ATW isn’t self-titled by mistake. It’s the band confirming and continuing to develop their approach, in the devil’s boogie of “Fishbelly 86 Onions,” the organ-laced groove and masterful flow of “Half-Tongue,” the build of “HJTC” and the fluid jam in closer “Rob’s Dream.” You can hear it in the mellow patience of that last track, never lost but always wandering, and in “1st vs. 2nd,” where they turn from a frenetic shake to some purposefully metal-ish riffing while still holding onto gut-tightening tension. And what do they do with that? Some overblown payoff? Hell no. They cut it short, drift into noise and then dig into “Half-Tongue” ahead of the moodier “Diamond,” which, true to its name, seems to turn any light that touches it into a prism. This is a band who delight in the exploration, in finding new rules to break, and in continually learning newways to do so. ATW is a reaction to being a “bigger” act. To playing bigger shows, bigger tours, etc. From the sustained consonants in Parks’ vocals, to the sleek basslines that play off thec an’t-sit-still-won’t-sit-still swing in Staebler’s drums, to McLeod’s commanding slide in“Workhorse” and drifting melancholy at the outset of “Harvest Feast,” ATW is their laying claim to the essential facets of their identity. And most crucial to that identity is its shifting nature. All Them Witches didn’t get to this point by resting on laurels, and if anything, the urgency of these tracks – fast pushers and sleepy jams alike – is among their greatest strengths. It’s a rawer delivery, as stage-ready as the band itself, and it captures All Them Witches in this moment. Is ATW who they’ll be tomorrow? Who the hell knows? Check back in and we’ll find out together. That’s the whole idea. allthemwitches.org • Facebook • Instagram • Twitter L.A. WitchL.A. Witch’s self-titled debut album unfurled like hazy memories of late night revelries in the city center creeping back in on a hungover Sunday morning. Guitarist/vocalist Sade Sanchez purred and crooned over jangling guitar chords, painting pictures of urban exploits, old American haunts, and private escapades with a master’s austerity. Bassist Irita Pai and drummer Ellie English polished the patina of the band’s vintage sound, adding a full-bodied thump and intoxicating swing to the album’s dusty ballads, ominous invitations, and sultry rock songs. The album had an air of effortlessness, like these songs were written into the fabric of the Western landscape by some past generation and conjured into our modern world by three powerful conduits. The band readily admits that L.A. Witch was a casual affair and that the songs came together over the course of several years. That natural flow hit a snag when the band’s popularity grew and they began touring regularly, so a new strategy became necessary for their sophomore album, the swaggering and beguiling Play With Fire. Where L.A. Witch oozed with vibe and atmosphere, with the whole mix draped in reverb, sonically placing the band in some distant realm, broadcast across some unknown chasm of time, Play With Fire comes crashing out of the gate with a bold, brash, in-your-face rocker “Fire Starter.” The authoritative opener is a deliberate mission statement. “Play With Fire is a suggestion to make things happen,” says Sanchez. “Don’t fear mistakes or the future. Take a chance. Say and do what you really feel, even if nobody agrees with your ideas. These are feelings that have stopped me in the past. I want to inspire others to be freethinkers even if it causes a little burn.” And by that line of reasoning, “Fire Starter” becomes a call to action, an anthem against apathy. From there the album segues into the similarly bodacious rocker “Motorcycle Boy”—a feisty love song inspired by classic cinema outlaws like Mickey Rourke, Marlon Brando, and Steve McQueen. At track three we hear L.A. Witch expand into new territories as “Dark Horse” unfurls a mixture of dustbowl folk, psychedelic breakdowns, and fire-and-brimstone organ lines. And from there the band only gets more adventurous. Between their touring schedule, studio availability, and the timeline for releasing records, L.A. Witch found themselves with only two months to do the bulk of writing for Play With Fire. They holed up for January and February, essentially self-quarantining for the writing process before March’s mandatory COVID shutdown. “As far the creative process goes, this record is a result of sheer willingness to write,” says Sanchez. “When you sit down and make things happen, they will happen, rather than waiting to be inspired.” The time constraints and focused writing sessions ultimately forced the band into new territories. “I’ve definitely learned that having restrictions forces you to think outside the box,” says Pai. “That structure really brings about creativity in an unexpected and abundant way.” While L.A. Witch isn’t looking for a total transformation, they’ve stridden boldly forward with the amped up riffs and slashing fuzz lines of “I Wanna Lose.” Even the song’s message, a celebration of defeat as a starting point for rebirth and redemption, wields a kind of gravity that feels new for the band. “Gen-Z” carries a heavy weight as well, as Sanchez ponders the rise suicide rate in a generation raised with social media between lashings of air-raid siren guitar leads. “Sexorexia” wields a fiery garage rock energy unmatched by any other moment in their catalog; “Maybe the Weather” is a minor-key country tune given the cosmic treatment of hard-tremolo keys, woozy backward slide guitar, and heady production techniques; and “True Believers” offers up a filthy noise-inflected punk scorcher. The album wraps up the “Starred,” a druggy exploration of exploratory guitar squall built on Pai’s grimy fuzz bass and English’s propulsive groove. Over the course of Play With Fire, it feels like we’ve traversed the history of American rock n’ roll from it’s rugged cross pollination of blues and country music, through the psychedelia of the ‘60s, into the early punk scene of the ‘70s, and landing at the damaged art rock of early ‘80s New York City. Play With Fire is a bold new journey that retains L.A. Witch’s siren-song mystique, nostalgic spirit, and contemporary cool. Despite the stylistic breadth of the record, there is a unifying timbre across the album’s nine tracks, as if the trio of young musicians is bound together as a collective of old souls tapping into the sounds of their previous youth. Suicide Squeeze is proud to offer Play With Fire to the world on August 21, 2020 on CD/LP/CS/DIG formats. The first LP pressing is limited to 1,500 copies worldwide—1k on translucent yellow vinyl and 500 label exclusive copies on clear with red and black splatter. Both cassette and vinyl come with a DL coupon. lawitch.merchnow.com • Facebook • Instagram • Twitter All Them Witches L.A. WITCH