Album Review: All Them Witches, Nothing as the Ideal
A band in a place. When the news came through in early March that Nashville’s All Them Witches — the three-piece of bassist/vocalist Charles Michael Parks, Jr., guitarist Ben McLeod and drummer/tape-looper/graphic-artist Robby Staebler — were recording their sixth full-length at Abbey Road Studios in London, and further, that they were bringing producer Mikey Allred along to helm the recording, it was enough to ignite the imagination as to what ghosts they might be able to conjure in that space. Without a doubt, Nothing as the Ideal — the title-line appearing amid the chugging tension and restless-foot kickdrum of opener “Saturnine & Iron Jaw” — is the most nuanced recording All Them Witches have ever done.
In the intentionally-left-there slight crack of Parks‘ voice past the midpoint of “The Children of Coyote Woman,” in the balance between torrential rhythmic intensity and ranging guitar on “Lights Out,” and in the quiet, subtle crackle of McLeod‘s standalone guitar in the two-minute instrumental “Everest,” which might in another context have been an interlude, but through whatever probably-legendary amplifier he’s playing through offers one of Nothing as the Ideal‘s most gorgeous moments of tonality. Perhaps a curious highlight, but it tells a lot of the story of the band’s fourth LP under the banner of New West Records in that it captures a stirring performance in likewise stirring detail. It is high-fidelity, not in the same way as the lush-sounding Sleeping Through the War (review here) from 2017 that their fifth album, 2018’s ATW (review here), seemed to be reacting against, but in a way that is more about the band reaching into themselves as artists.
Staebler‘s experimental bent that’s now manifest as well in the side-project Uvways shows up in cuts like “41,” “Rats in Ruin” and in transitions between songs, taking the place that up to this point was filled by keys or other arrangement elements from a fourth member of the band, be it Allan Van Cleave or the shorter-tenured Jonathan Draper, who appeared on ATW only. McLeod‘s progressive, sometimes aggressive turns of guitar are writ large throughout in the full dynamic breadth of his work, from “Everest” to the lead wash and coming-apart-at-the-seams jam at the end of 9:50 side A closer “See You Next Fall” and the crunching fuzz reminiscent of 2013’s Lightning at the Door (review here) that shows up on second track “Enemy of My Enemy” and the later “41.”
He too has a side-project in the instrumental and more metal-leaning Woodsplitter. And Parks, who turns verses into poetry readings here more than ever, obscure in his images painting Romulus and Remus as good ol’ boys on “The Children of Coyote Woman,” seeming to critique touring life in “See You Next Fall,” leading an invocation of unplugged Nirvana in the early going of nine-minute finale “Rats in Ruin,” and layering his voice to make a single out of “Enemy of My Enemy” even as later he seems to refuse to be wholly caught int the shove of “Lights Out.” Anytime he wants to spend a year or two wandering in the woods and put out an experimentalist Americana/neo-folk record, one doubts he’d meet with argument.
Nothing as the Ideal draws together these different sides of these three players and builds itself as one entirely using elements of each persona. Allred has been a friend of the band of long-standing. He produced their 2015 New West label debut, Dying Surfer Meets His Maker (review here), mastered the 2019 single “1 x 1” (discussed here) — among other works — and his knowledge of the band’s workings is all the more essential throughout these tracks as they recorded as a three-piece for the first time. It is no shock that the latest All Them Witches album sounds different from the one before it. They all do. But while they approach it with characteristic swagger and have perhaps inadvertently deflected the narrative via their choice of locale in Abbey Road, there’s no question that the former foursome taking on the task of presenting themselves as a trio is a big change.
They’re helped throughout by time they put in touring in such a configuration, as well as by Allred‘s work at the helm, and while Nothing as the Ideal takes the band to places they’ve never been in terms of aesthetic, it’s also more their own than they’ve ever been, transcending the heavy blues genre-forging of their earlier work while seeming still to draw from the abiding melancholy of Dying Surfer Meets His Maker and the organic weight of Lightning at the Door. This is coupled with the unmitigated, seemingly unceasing growth of Parks, McLeod and Staebler as creative individuals, and the coming together of the familiar with the new is perhaps as much a sonic signature as All Them Witches have, regardless of the lineup. From the ambient unfolding of “Saturnine & Iron Jaw” through the push and pull of “Enemy of My Enemy,” the resonance of “Everest,” the twists of “41” and the build of energy that seems to happen across that song and “Lights Out” leading to the quiet initial stretch of “Rats in Ruin” — which itself ends with a brief jam from the trio together that sounds like a coda for career to this point — Nothing as the Ideal wholly lives up to the standard its title sets.
It finds All Them Witches chasing not a preestablished idea of who they are or what their songwriting process is or should be, but their own creative impulses at the moment. They have excelled at this since 2012’s Our Mother Electricity (review here) served as their debut LP, and while their productivity in the years since is something in itself to be admired — six albums in eight years, along with EPs, live releases and countless digital one-offs, etc. — the expressionist aspects of their work, the continuing progression of their craft and the memorable impression their songs make all comes together on Nothing as the Ideal in what feels like an act of self-defiance as much as one of self-definition. As recognizable a band as they’ve become, one never knows what shape All Them Witches might take as they move forward. The fact that they’re still so rife with potential six albums into their career can only emphasize how special a band they truly are.
All Them Witches, Nothing as the Ideal (2020)
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This records fuckin rad