Amazon.co.uk allows you to pay for your items in your local currency. Restrictions apply. Learn More. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Review
Admittedly, we have been tricked into believing in the same strange world explored in Jim White’s most-excellent film Searching For the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, but can you blame us? It’s a fascinating place inhabited by outsiders that’s free and uneasy. And while The Cave Singers’ music doesn’t inhabit the deepest corner of this world, the trio’s head-dizzying rock’n’roll does delve into this squalid, mystical territory.
They’re from Seattle and comprised of three righteous punks, including Derek Fudesco, the man responsible for Pretty Girls Make Graves’ spiralling basslines. They also claim they didn’t set out to make a psych-folk album; that they don’t listen to the sort of wyrd, Greil Marcus-approved folk’n’roll you’d imagine inspired No Witch and their previous two albums. But that’s okay. This sort of churning, trippy, smoke-hazed fare only comes from how you feel, man. And that mood is fractious and unsettled.
There’s something occasionally off-putting about Pete Quirk’s Rod Stewart croak, and some of the band’s brawling barroom country is just as obvious, like No Prosecution If We Bail. But most of these songs recorded with Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Black Mountain) swing pendulously, like a noose, bringing down an ominous cloak over proceedings. The circular rhythms are hypnotic, Fudesco’s riffs – some gnarled, some pretty – waft up in smoky loop-the-loops, and the droning Eastern vibes percolate queasily. It’s as if they’ve opened the door of the juke joint and let in the weirdoes.
Influence comes as much from Beggars Banquet (on Clever Creatures), neo-post-punk bands like The Ponys and the loping Krautrock of Can as it does dust-kicking Americana. But with steel strings slick with gumbo grease, sweet gospel inflections and lyrics about "trying to raise a family up" (on Fall) you can almost feel the humidity of the Deep South coming off the record.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
Their debut was arguably inconsistent, but nevertheless largely likeable, pastoral Americana. In turn, it was succeeded by the aptly-titled Welcome Joy, an album that, with electrified picking such as that found on "Leap", very much now seems a stepping stone to this the band's third, and first for Jagjaguwar.
For, No Witch appears to be The Cave Singers going rock. Despite this claim, there are few vast departures from the band's trademark sound. These days however, Pete Quirk is without question smoother in his vocal delivery - his hootin' and hollerin' reigned in in favour of much more patient song-craft, which suggests at the mature, blues-y R&B that Delta Spirit have been making their own of late. Evidence, if it's needed, comes in the form of the Stonesian strut "Clever Creatures".
This fullness and richness of sound translates all the same within The Cave Singers' traditional realm. Their frequent finger-plucking confirms it, yet now there are no concessions to washboard percussion and the like. In their place, we find a rarefied electric stomp, as well as quick-paced blues rhythms that entwine with tambourine claps, as can be heard on the early highlight "Black Leaf". It also becomes clear that the band have done some research on their adopted moniker, plundering cave-like echo for the thunderous extract "Faze Wave" - the resultant cocktail of darkness and danger proving an exciting one.
As a result, this all places No Witch in early-Black Keys country, something in which the album closer "No Prosecution If We Bail" revels. Its fizzy rock rhythms marry Quirk's most lascivious holler, akin in its gruffness to that found on the winning eels album Hombre Lobo. More surprising are the gospel flourishes that blossom within the backing vocals of the harmonica-heavy, yet strikingly soulful "Haystacks", as well as on the Hammond-led bar-room bruiser "Falls".
But No Witch is not all beef. The summery construct of "Haller Lake" is warmly familiar in contrast. Equally, "All Land Crabs And Divinity Ghosts" recalls current genre champion The Tallest Man On Earth, running with the plugged- in sound that the vertically endowed Kristian Matsson experimented with on his most recent EP Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird. It's a sound undoubtedly worth repeating, and the longingly beautiful "Distant Sures" dutifully makes sure to reprise it.
So, while No Witch is unlikely to set the world alight in terms of originality, the posts to which it stakes itself have been burning brightly for decades and they're unlikely to extinguish any time soon with quality fuel such as this kicking up the flames.
Advised downloads: "Black Leaf" and "Faze Wave".
Cant stop listening to it. Lots of variation and many real stand out tracks.
If you like a bit of indie affected folk, somehow mixed in with mesmerising beats and hooky guitar lines then just go buy it.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
