All Them Witches Post “Holding Your Breath Across the River” from Baker’s Dozen Monthly Singles Project
At this point, Nashville’s All Them Witches have unveiled well more than an album’s worth of material with their ‘Baker’s Dozen’ singles project, releasing one new song (plus a bonus at some point, I guess) on the last Friday of every month, and as today brings the mellow psych-blues poetry reading and fuzz leads, loops and righteous meander of “Holding Your Breath Across the River,” it brings into relief just how broadly scoped their sound is. Some bands never put out the same record twice. Throughout 2022, All Them Witches have extended that ethic to the songs themselves.
They’ve spent much of October touring Europe, killing it on a bunch of sold out dates by all accounts I’ve seen on social media, and proceed with textured ambience in “Holding Your Breath Across the River” like it’s no big thing, guitar and synth drone that in most contexts would be enough to qualify as experimental here still just part of the backdrop for the telephone-effect mostly-spoken-word vocals that remind just how dug-in this band can be when they want.
I don’t know where they’re headed next, but I feel comfortable predicting that whatever Nov. brings from them, it, again, will be something different. Ergo, enjoy this one while it’s fresh.
Have to wonder by now if the band are planning some larger release for all these songs — you can stream the entire project so far below — even if it’s just putting them up as a collection on Bandcamp. I’ve bought one or two on Amazon over the course of the year to-date — and I don’t know if you’ve ever purchased digital music from that particular outlet, but it’s a terrible experience — but I wouldn’t mind giving it all a front-to-back listen I guess sometime early in 2023, perhaps. If I’m lucky.
In any case, peace out, October:
All Them Witches, “Holding Your Breath Across the River”
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https://allthemwitches.lnk.to/tour
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All Them Witches is:
Charles Michael Parks, Jr – bass, vocals, acoustic guitar
Ben McLeod – guitar, vocals
Robby Staebler – drums, vocals
Allan Van Cleave – Rhodes piano, keys, violin
In my mind I assumed that all these songs would be on an album called “Baker’s Dozen”, with “1×1” added as the extra song. That tune deserves to be on a proper release