Saturday, August 22, 2020

LA Witch : "Play With Fire"







This trio of gals falls some where between the Donnas and Hole. Their is grungy jangle to their sound and by the second song the vocals have taken on a more despondent moan. Granted Hole also had a despondent moan so it leans from the punk to grunge more . The first two songs are pretty pleasing then when things are giving more space on "Dark Horse" they do not feel held together as well. The chords rings out in a more rambing western rock feel on " I Wanna Lose" though the chorus is underwhelming. There is more of a an old punk Runawways feel to "Gen-Z" . The guitars do the heavy lifting for the vocals on this one. The more punk flavor benefits ' Sexorexia". WHile her voice works , her pipes are fairly limited and work more off attitude which makes this song work.

Evne without the most stellar voice melodic moments do benefit them as proven on the moodier "Maybe the Weather". Once again this finds the guitar compensating for the vocals , but in a more balanced fashion this time around. There is more of a post punk tension to "True Believer" . This gives a little darker feel to the song.  I am not sure what happens on the last song, but it gets too nosiy and has nothing to really hold it together. I appreciate when it ebbs down to the bass groove and the lower vocal chant, but the guitar which has been the glue of this album falls in to chaos taking the song with it.

I will give this album an 8.5 , except for the last song everything is solid and might just take time to grow on me. The album starts strong and I think they have a ton of potential. It is not their first album, and there are some things they truly have dialed in here.  I think if they moved from the more garage songs to writing "pop" songs they could do it in a way that still maintained their dark punk sense. Until then this is what we get.


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