The UK trio Esben and the Witch create spellbinding music capable of carrying a lot of emotional weight, and for their sophomore LP, Wash the Sins, Not Only the Face, out today on Matador, the band has again pitched their work on the existential precipice. Here is a very cool write-up about the album from the band, with each track title containing a relevant and inspired URL link, as well as, “…a few sentences about each track to show where our heads were at, at the time of writing.”
This is the beginning of the expedition – a rallying cry, if you will. The sun is rising at the start of the day. The name comes from a type of calcite, used by Vikings as a navigational aid, which acts as a prism splitting light into two paths. We wanted to return with a sense of purpose and power. Come see us play it live, let us try to shake your bones!
This is a song about dreams and your dream self. We wanted to create something that musically reflected that swirling nature of sleep. As such much time was spent in the studio, experimenting with pedals and delay effects. So you’ve woken now, reflecting on your dreams, as the vehicle starts to move and the landscape begins to roll by.
Inspiration for this was found in a Dalí poem, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. We originally hoped to use some words directly from it, but we also didn’t want to get into a legal battle with his estate. (Only going to be one winner there, right?) It’s intended to be surreal, trippy and beautiful in parts. And the “Head” in the title refers to that of a flower as opposed to a person.
This is set in the full heat of the day. The shimmering refers to that heat haze that makes the horizon tremble, and the lyrics talk of mirages and optical illusions caused by the sun. We all read The Outsider and wanted, musically, to try and recreate that wooziness that creeps in and threatens to overcome you. We called the heavy and rich pulses in the bridges Sun Blooms.
It felt look a good introduction – not because it’s a ‘single’ (how do you write those, anyway?) but because it felt like a good ‘bridge’ from the older songs to this new set. The song is inspired by the film Black Swan, and the tension and paranoia that it creates. The music came from an original guitar idea that was in waltz time; this gradually became eclipsed by the song to the point that it was removed entirely, but the name endures.
Back to the journey, the sun starts to get lower in the sky and thinks about setting. It’s intended to be an evening song. We wanted it to have a sense of propulsion and wonder as you travel through a landscape. The name is from a Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken, about a road forking in a “yellow wood”. Which way do you go?
Despair is all about doppelgangers and making a racket. We wanted to marry those two things. Rachel read the book of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov and liked, amongst other elements, the humour. When we demoed it the song was so frenzied and scrappy we thought it would never fit. But we liked it so much that we worked it into its current form, where hopefully it retains its unruly character but can sit better alongside the other album tracks.
We drove through Texas at night, and saw all these oil pumpjacks silently working. Which seems relevant to this, as musically we wanted to create a machine-like drone in the verses. Lyrically it describes something brutal done for beautiful reasons. Musically and lyrically the choruses are intended to emerge triumphant from the blood and the oil.
This is the most personal song we have ever written. Personal in that we wrote it by playing it over and over in an endless loop, each contemplating. It was inspired by sitting in the back of the van and staring out of the window, with all the time in the world to think. To record it we sat in the two-metre-square amp room in the studio and did it in one take. No rearranging or repeats, to try and capture the feeling. Meanwhile, the sun is gone now and the journey nears its conclusion.
Smashed To Pieces In The Still Of The Night
We saw this written on a wall in Vienna and decided to borrow it for our own devices. It seems to summarise well what we wanted to achieve, musically and lyrically. We were driving and all the lights were gone, apart from the headlamps in this great expanse, whist a train of a hundred carriages rumbled by to the left, and the driver started to descend into madness. The journey into this strange desert landscape finally ends with a confrontation with your doppelganger: “How long do you mean to be content?” it’s asking.
——-
Check out the band’s recent, modern dance inspired video for the track “Despair”:
Live in Europe? Check out these up-coming Esben & the Witch tour dates:
THU 07 FEB BIRMINGHAM HARE & HOUNDS
FRI 08 FEB GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART
SAT 09 FEB MANCHESTER BUNKER
FRI 15 FEB BRUSSELS BOTANIQUE
SAT 16 FEB MUNSTER GLEISS 22
SUN 17 FEB HAMBURG KNUST
MON 18 FEB BERLIN BI NUU
WED 20 FEB MUNICH 59TO1
THU 21 FEB ZÜRICH ROTE FABRIK
FRI 22 FEB COLOGNE GEBAUDE 9
SAT 23 FEB UTRECHT TIVOLI OUDEGRACHT SPIEGELBAR
SUN 24 FEB PARIS POINT EPHEMERE
TUE 26 FEB LONDON SCALA
FRI 26 APR PORTO EXPONOR
