Album Review: The Cave Singers – No Witch

With the rich heritage of ex-Murder City Devil and Pretty Girls Make Graves man Derek Fudesco as a vital compnent and with two acclaimed full-lengths already in their back pockets (including 2009’s Welcome Joy), one would expect grand things from Seattle’s latest beloved sons The Cave Singers. Although No Witch is an album that is not without charm, it is also far from being one without its flaws. Sure there are some gorgeous moments such as the plaintive ‘Swim Club’ and the menacing ‘Falls’ but for every one of these little gems there is a sub-Ryan Adams stomper like ‘Black Leaf’ or a cod-psych ‘jam’ like ‘Outer Realms’ to drag the whole thing down.

Much of the fault lies here not necessarily with the accomplished, often off-kilter arrangements but with the trite, clichéd nature of many of the lyrics and much of the whiskey n’ cigarettes vocal delivery. ‘Haller Lake’, which comes across like a direct outtake from Heartbreaker or maybe Gold is an overwrought exercise in alt-country philosophy while ‘Clever Creatures’ contains lines like “Look at that sky man” and “Diane’s hangin’ in there, she wants to play some cards” which, if not sung in that increasingly tiresome ‘barroom troubadour’ fashion could have a little retro appeal. In this case though, they certainly don’t. There are also definite, worrying leanings to ‘proper’ rock and roll here, the opening bars of ‘Haystacks’ a painful reminder of trite ‘70s rock as reinterpreted by every wannabe American heritage band of the last decade. There’s a little bit of a choir on that one too. A gospel one. And a harmonica...

For those that may think this is something of a harsh assessment of a band who are clearly making music that holds great appeal for many people and is performed honestly and without guile, fine. True, it’s hard to genuinely dislike the actual sound here, so ingrained is it in our musical make-up, and yes genre-wide attacks often fall at the first hurdle but, are we not yet tired of old Americana formats and ideas being recycled for the thousandth time? This writer certainly thinks so.

Murder City Devils were a great band, though…