After releasing their debut self-titled album earlier this year via Suicide Squeeze Records, Californian trio L.A. Witch are sharing a new video today for the album standout track “Drive Your Car“. The band have also announced a European tour next March including a run of UK dates.
Shot in the Californian desert, the “Drive Your Car” video matches the grunge-soaked, reverb-heavy, post-punk sounds of L.A. Witch wonderfully. Director Allie Lane explains, “With the “Drive Your Car” video, I wanted to evoke a surreal state of adventure that matches the romantic lulls and highs of a road trip. L.A. Witch’s psych rock swells and enigmatic lyrics called for bleached color tones, mirror mirages and expansive desert landscapes.”
In the dimly lit interior of a small nightclub, where the stale smell of a thousand extinguished cigarettes drowns out the smell of spilt beer and broken dreams, a band plays against a backdrop of cheap golden tinsel. Outside, palm trees line the night’s horizon. In the years to come, the streets will swell into highways and interstates, but for now Los Angeles is still a young city growing daily with transplants from across the United States, all looking for a new life. It’s still a city largely cut off from the rest of the country, and in the years before the Manson family forever tarnishes the infinite hope of the Western enclave and before the Hell’s Angels of Altamont interrupt rock n’ roll’s peaceful trajectory with unprecedented violence, there is still a dreamy California sound for those dark rooms suffused with neon light. The three women of L.A. Witch wouldn’t be born for several decades, but their sound transports you back to those warm Californian nights in smoky rooms.
The name is a partial misnomer. Though the band hails from Los Angeles, they do not partake in any sort of witchcraft. Yet their ability to conjure a specific time and place through their sound does suggest a kind of magic. On their eponymous debut album, L.A. Witch’s reverb-drenched guitar jangle and sultry vocals conjure the analog sound of a collector’s prized 45 from some short-lived footnote cult band. The melodies forgo the bubblegum pop for a druggy haze that straddles the line between seedy glory and ominous balladry; the production can’t afford Phil Spector’s wall-of-sound, but the instruments’ simple beauty provides an economic grace that renders studio trickery unnecessary; the lyrics seem more descendent of Johnny Cash’s first-person morality tales than the vacuous empty gestures of pre-fab pop bands. This isn’t music for the masses; it’s music for miscreants, burnouts, down-and-out dreamers, and obsessive historians.
See L.A. Witch live:
THU DEC 21 – Los Angeles CA, Teragram Ballroom
FRI DEC 22 – San Diego CA, Casbah
SAT DEC 23 – Santa Ana CA, Constellation Room
FRI MAR 16 – Sion CH, Le Port Franc
SAT MAR 17 – Parma IT, Milk Party
TUE MAR 20 – Zurich CH, Rote Fabrik
WED MAR 21 – Berlin DE, Quasimodo
THU MAR 22 – Hamburg DE, Hafenklang
FRI MAR 23 – Stockholm SE, Melodybox
SAT MAR 24 – Goteborg SE, Truck Stop Alaska
TUE MAR 27 – Nottingham UK, The Chameleon
WED MAR 28 – Glasgow UK, Sleazy’s
THU MAR 29 – Newcastle UK, Cluny
FRI MAR 30 – London UK, Oslo
SAT MAR 31 – Leeds UK, Headrow House
WED APR 4 – Paris FR, Supersonic
THU APR 5 – Arras FR, Maison de l’etudiant
FRI APR 6 – Glarus CH, Veka
SAT APR 7 – Milan IT, Ohibo
Watch ‘Drive Your Car’ here: