by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Los Angeles’ Frankie and the Witch Fingers have been making expansive garage psych for near a decade, pushing their sound into all realms of cosmic exploration. They’ve released albums and singles via Burger Records, Let’s Pretend, Permanent Records, and most recently, last year’s ZAM LP with Greenway Records. Never ones to sit stagnant for too long however, the band are back today with a new single, Cavehead b/w Mind’s Eye, out via Greenway and Austin’s Reverberation Appreciation Society. While the single comes from an upcoming record, the frantic psych boogie is more than enough to whet appetites until then.
Fractured and immediately rocking on its own axis, “Cavehead” is psych rock played through the art rock cannon. The lyrics bounce back and forth like a calypso rhythm before the guitars come squealing in, the melody painted by raucous feedback. It’s weird, chaotic, and jittery, the holy trinity of freaked out psych, and Frankie and the Witch Fingers harness that energy into a big mystifying groove. The twitchy repetition leads way to a crushing break and a blast of noisy freedom, and the music video for the song follows suit. Directed by Railroad Bill, the clip captures a caveman in the wild, on a strange journey that only gets stranger after some mushrooms are consumed in the forest.
The band’s Dylan Sizemore shared:
"For us, the intention behind this song was to whittle down a 30-minute pattern we had been vamping into something a little more digestible and succinct. The pattern had a neat polyrhythmic nature to it that we really wanted to explore deeper to give it a lively (David) Byrne kind of World Music feel. While we were in the studio listening back to the main tracks, Shaughnessy [Star] and Josh [Menashe] started messing around with these Thai wooden blocks and playing a sort of call and response pattern in this perfect little tight pocket. We were all so excited to add that last little finishing touch that really brought it all home!
Lyrically the idea behind this song is about everyone being a process rather than a person or persona. You're not Martha, you're Martha-ing. With the right type of entrancing groove, sometimes you can get sucked into the essence of what Martha-ing is all about."