All Them Witches Complete Baker’s Dozen Monthly Singles Project
Today brings the final two installments of All Them Witches‘ Baker’s Dozen singles series. The Nashville four-piece throughout 2022 have been issuing one song at a time on the last Friday of each month, and I guess rather than keep it going into January, they opted for a blowout. No complaints. Both cuts are available to stream in the videos below and are linked through to various digital outlets. I don’t know if they or the whole collection will make their way to Bandcamp or not, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable.
As they have all along, in this series and out of it, the band explore disparate ideas in sound in the last two Baker’s Dozen singles. “Mama is a Shining Star” is an initially-drumless, proggy wash of melody laid out across 10 minutes of psychedelic drone swells, woven violin, even some processed vocals, and gorgeous, true-to-title shimmer set to a procession that breaks past its halfway point to more minimalistic fare, holding a waveform pattern that hints at more until its eventual fade — the hidden messages delivered after the hypnotized state is induced. Their experimentalist side coming forward, satisfyingly as long as you don’t go into it expecting a hook or drummer Robby Staebler‘s restless shuffle, it recalls some of the loop-based movements on 2020’s Nothing is Real (review here), and is encouraging in its freeform style of further adventures to come.
“Real Hippies are Cowboys” pairs organ and pedal steel with layers of electric guitar and bass over its instrumental eight-minute stretch, which rises gradually out of initial lines of guitar and does have more of a full-band feel, drums and all. It’s not their first foray into twang by any means, but it does make a point of its delve into country-psych leaning more toward the one, then the other in its later reaches, while staying loyal to both sides before the jam shows itself out in fading fashion. If that’s to be the epilogue of Baker’s Dozen — 13 of 12, as it were — then the underlying message of All Them Witches remains consistent in their unpredictability. Throughout this entire series, one has never really known what’s coming next. For a band who’ve been around more than a decade now, have enjoyed more success and influence than most ostensibly ‘heavy’ acts in that time and have six full-lengths under their collective belt, that they can keep their audience guessing without sacrificing the quality of their work shouldn’t be discounted as a consideration. They keep winding up in new places, thankfully.
The entirety of Baker’s Dozen is streaming below in the various players. The last two songs are first, then the rest all the way back to January’s “Blacksnake Blues,” in suitably jumbled order.
Enjoy:
All Them Witches, “Mama is a Shining Star”
All Them Witches, “Real Hippies are Cowboys”
Mama is a Shining Star: https://allthemwitches.lnk.to/shiningstar
Real Hippies are Cowboys: https://allthemwitches.lnk.to/realhippies
Tour On Sale Now:
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
