Last month L.A. Witch released their self-titled debut via Suicide Squeeze, an album steeped in the influence of Los Angelesâa city thatâs been mythologized for decades.
The record opens with the murder ballad âKill My Baby Tonight.â Itâs the perfect introduction to the band: rumbling drums from Ellie English, slithering bass lines from Irita Pai, and Sade Sanchezâs echoing vocals and funereal surf guitar riffs. Sanchez plots revenge with brokenhearted logic: âIâm gonna hurt my baby tonight/If he donât come home on time.â She says itâs about âlove and obsession. You love someone so much, but you also kind of want to kill them,â she laughs.
Wild passion drives every L.A. Witch song, which means they travel to some pretty dark corners of the human existence. Love shape-shifts into danger on tracks like âKill My Babyâ and âBrian,â while âDrive Your Carâ soundtracks a getawayâor at least thatâs what the throttling pace suggests, since the lyrics arenât always audible. Though she often sings about bad romance and exorcizing souls, Sanchezâs voice sounds cool and detachedâmaybe a little too detached, stuck in the undercurrent of the albumâs gleaming, electrifying melodies. âUntitledâ moves into the Gun Clubâs dusty territory as she bristles, âWhy donât you get away from me?â
âA lot of our roots as a band are influenced by the Gun Club,â she says. Neither group stays within the punk genre; the Gun Club is often described as cowpunk, but L.A. Witch doesnât quite fit there, eitherâtheir music is smoky and panoramic, capturing both the claustrophobia of seedy bars and the freedom of sweeping vistas.
Plenty of other Southern Californian bands can be traced back to these reference points; L.A. Witch just sounds better than most. Each track reverberates with the cinematic influence of their hometown, but this is not the Los Angeles of La La Landâdreams donât always come true. L.A. Witch lives in the universe David Lynch created with Mulholland Drive, where dreams rot and attract flies on the side of the road.
âIâm wearing a shirt with Laura Palmer on it right now,â English says when I mention Lynch, and Pai notes that they made a detour to Twin Peaksâ Snoqualmie Falls on their first tour through the Pacific Northwest.
L.A. Witchâs debut sounds like it was conjured by some occult force, but none of the women identify as witches. When I ask whether their name is a reference to The Craftâa 1996 cult horror movie about witches in Los AngelesâSanchez laughs.
âIt wasnât... [But] itâs really funny, because sometimes weâll be walking down the street and Iâll see our reflection and just start laughing, because Iâm like, âFuck, we look like weâre in The Craft right now.ââ