All Them Witches Post “6969 WXL The Cage” from Baker’s Dozen Monthly Singles Project
This is precisely the sort of thing I was hoping that All Them Witches‘ reunion with keyboardist/Rhodes pianist/violinist Allan Van Cleave wouldn’t preclude. The band’s 2020 album, Nothing as the Ideal (review here), will forever be a standout in their catalog for the fact that it was made as a three-piece with Charles Michael Parks, Jr. on bass/vocals, Ben McLeod on guitar and Robby Staebler on drums — and visuals, as always — and no one else. The Nashville-based outfit had kind of struggled since Van Cleave left, first trying to replace him with Jonathan Draper on 2018’s ATW (review here), then finally continuing on without a full-time fourth member at all. To their credit, they made it work.
Clearly they felt something was lacking — hence bringing Van Cleave back in — but in the interim, Nothing as the Ideal introduced the use of tape loops and ethereal effects sounds as a way of fleshing out the work of the guitar, bass, drums and vocals, and that brought an experimentalist backdrop for the songs that was legitimately unlike anything the band had done before. The new single “6969 WXL The Cage” answers whether or not such ideas are still fair game for All Them Witches in 2022 with a decisive yes. Marked by hypnotic electronic beats and manipulated radio-style voiceovers — there are a couple song dedications there — to give a sense that you’re driving along an empty highway, possibly at night, scanning through the FM wasteland and reconciling yourself to listening to the droning on about nothing just to have some human connection. Shout-outs and so on. What a wreck of a great idea is commercial radio.
“6969 WXL The Cage” is July’s installment of the Baker’s Dozen singles project the band has been doing since the start of the year. They’ve all been posted here before, but I’ll spare you the link dump. The videos are down below — there are six; can’t miss ’em — and as we plunge deeper into the second half of 2022, it’s refreshing to find All Them Witches doing so by breaking new ground for the band.
Watch out for snakes:
All Them Witches, “6969 WXL The Cage”
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All Them Witches is:
Charles Michael Parks, Jr – bass, vocals
Ben McLeod – guitar, vocals
Robby Staebler – drums, vocals
Allan Van Cleave – Rhodes piano, keys, violin
