Label: Suicide Squeeze Records
Released: 21st August 2020
Rating: ★★★
On L.A Witch’s second album ‘Play With Fire’, the band provide the soundtrack to enchanting barren deserts, painting images of misadventures in the sweltering heat of their namesake capital.
As with all great second albums, the band’s sonic soundscape has grown further, this time a confident step from the jangly desert rock realm. A new, curious confidence is flowing through its veins, where weird and wonderful sounds piece together the stories told. At points you’re transported back to the 60s and 70s with sensual, blues-tinged country (‘Motorcycle Boy’), and in others, you’re in a brooding post-punk haze (‘Gen Z’) or in experimental and gorgeous psychedelic grooves (‘Starred’).
While the sounds may feel nostalgic, and make you yearn for a mysterious land far away, the attitude and lyricism remain contemporary, delivered with a cool sophistication. Driving basslines and moments of distorted guitars and woozy garage rock make ‘Play With Fire’ an inviting listen, and you’ll want to be part of their misfit gang of old souls in no time.
