Esben and the Witch are a fascinating band, quite unlike any other. They are also something of a mass of contradictions. They are a Brighton band in origin, who now live in Berlin and are sometimes assumed to be German as a result. They quite consciously defy genre categorisation. They are a band with a woman at its very heart, but named after a horrifically sexist Danish fairy story. Their music is complex, without the self indulgence of some Prog Rock. It is dark and even sinister, being often inspired by unsettling folk tales, yet it is seldom depressing. It is gothic, but not Goth; spiritual, but not religious; thoughtful and thought provoking, but neither preachy nor presumptuous. They have described themselves as ‘nightmare pop’ and they certainly can be, but there is also a great deal in their music that is beautiful.
With six studio albums, a glorious live album and a series of EP’s to their credit EATW are veterans now, having existed since 2008 and, impressively, they still have the same line-up they started with: Rachel Davies, on Bass and vocals; Daniel Copeman on Drums and Thomas Fisher on Guitar. Yet they remain fresh and original. Their new album, ‘Nowhere‘, which only came out shortly before the Soup Kitchen gig, is a superb case in point, and a worthy successor to their 2016 masterpiece ‘Older Terrors‘.
Fig 2. Esben and the Witch. Photo: Hera Says team.
The gig saw the band on great form, with a performance gripping enough to make the hairs at the back of the neck stand up. They were also helped by good sound engineering, for once. Fisher’s dissonant and dystopian guitar playing is a major part of the band’s overall instrumental sound and even on records it is deservedly set well to the fore in the mix. Live, however, there were occasions when it was perhaps mixed just a tad too high against Davies’ bass, and there were even times during the louder guitar passages when her vocals also became a little bit swamped. Nevertheless, these were few and far between, and the dark brooding quality of the music still came over successfully, aided by a well matched light show, which majored on eerie blue back-lighting.
As we commented in a recent article about US band, ‘Strange Relations‘, there are times when a beautiful, angelic voice can actually make the impact of a song more, rather than less unsettling, and this is something that Rachel Davies – like Strange Relations’ Casey Sowa – understands well. She has a wonderfully pure, wistful voice which really is more effective in singing about some of the darker themes covered in EATW’s songs than a harsher tone would be.
Fig 3. Esben and the Witch. Photo: Hera Says team.
A good example is ‘Dull Gret‘ off ‘Nowhere’, which is based on another folk tale, this time a Flemish story about the leader of an army of women who invade Hell. Popular depiction’s, such as Bruegel’s famous 1563 oil painting of the story, and her popular name of Mad Meg, might suggest a grating or even cackling, voice. But Davies is almost dreamy at times. She does, though, have a greater dynamic range than Sowa, which allows her to throttle up rather further to become almost imperious on occasions. Even so, she never quite looses that purity of tone. This is an impressive enough feat on record, where the artist has full control of the process, but she also managed to resist the temptation to shout live, even when her voice was being left too far down in the mix, and so managed to preserve the same quality on stage. Likewise, Davies’ vocal range extends deeper than Sowa’s, as in the song ‘The Unspoiled‘, and this can also add to the ominous atmosphere. Interestingly, although the two bands are very different, there is another parallel in that Fisher’s often shredding guitar style can sometimes resemble that of ‘Strange Relations’ long-time (if now ex) guitarist Nate Hart-Andersen.
Fig 4. Esben and the Witch. Photo: Hera Says team.
The ‘Soup Kitchen’ set included most of the new album, along with some welcome dips into the back catalogue. The latter included a number of tracks from ‘Older Terrors’ and it was gratifying to hear my own personal favourite live – the hauntingly beautiful ‘Sylvan‘. EATW do not tend to be a band where songs get a cheer of recognition from the audience as they start. Indeed, they specialise in longer pieces with slow burn introductions, which are not always instantly recognisable even to dedicated fans. Nor does the audience sing along with the lyrics very much. Instead, they more resemble a classical audience in behaviour – listening spellbound. And understandably so. This is a cerebral band who appeal to the intellect as much as the hind brain. You can still dance to them if the mood takes you, but you think while you are doing it. It is a wonderful combination. Indeed, given the band’s love of tales of magic and mythology, ‘spellbound’ seems a particularly apt term.
Support acts often appear to be picked almost at random and can create something of a jarring mix. On occasions, however, the choice is inspired and the two (or more) acts compliment each other perfectly to produce a whole greater than the sum of its parts. We recently reviewed one such example: ‘The Japanese House’ supported by ‘Art School Girlfriend’ at the Gorilla. and ‘A-Sun Amissa’ were, likewise, an ideal support for EATW.
They are the vision of solo artist Richard Knox and although they often play as a full band, this tends to be a group of collaborators with a somewhat floating membership, rather than a fixed outfit. At the ‘Soup Kitchen’ they played as a two piece, with Knox himself on guitar, and his wife Claire on bass and clarinet. They describe their genre, amongst other things, as ‘Neo-Classical’ and certainly there is much of the classical in its structure, even if not in its sound. Their other self description as ‘Ambient’ is also valid, although they are very far from the musical wallpaper that this term can sometimes imply.
Fig 5. A-Sun Amissa. Photo: Hera Says team.
As with most classical, their music comes as wholly instrumental ‘pieces’, not as songs. There are no lyrics or singing of any kind. There were no title announcements or stage banter. Indeed neither band member even had a microphone. Yet no absence is felt, just as it is not with other instrumental bands, such as ‘Tangerine Dream‘. As with EATW themselves, their appeal is as much cerebral and spiritual as it is to the dance impulse, and none the worse for that. They also take an experimental approach to their playing styles, both musicians, for example, playing guitar and bass with violin bows on occasions. The result was rather impressive and does produce a different sound to other guitar bowing techniques, such as using an EBow, or a glissando bar.
The band have a new album out (their fourth) called ‘Ceremonies in the Stillness‘, which is beautifully recorded to real hi-fi quality and very well worth a listen. We bought the physical CD version from the merch stall on the night, and it has now had multiple playings, especially of the glorious track ‘No perception of light‘. As an added bonus, it also comes with download codes for the MP3 version, along with a taster selection of other material from the same record company (Gizeh Records). One small quibble, though: be warned that there is no CD case as such, and no spine lettering to help you identify the disc on a shelf. Instead it comes in light card packaging that seems almost purpose designed to get torn and fall apart almost at once and yet be impossible to adapt to a conventional jewel case. This is a shame, because it might put buyers off actually playing what is a very good record and it would have been such an easy problem to avoid.
In short, this was a great evening of beautiful, thought provoking music, by two superb and well matched bands. Esben and the Witch have long been personal favourites of ours and anything new from them can pretty much be guaranteed to be great. ‘A-Sun Amissa’ were new to us but we will be very interested to hear more from them in future.
Indie three-piece Punk band ‘The Screaming Females’ are one of Hera’s favourites. They have been around for years, with seven studio albums (the first two self-released). They also have a live album, a slightly eccentric EP called ‘Chalk Tape’ – initially released as a limited edition Cassette – and an EP of re-issued singles. In addition, singer/guitarist Marissa Paternoster has a solo project called ‘Noun’ which also has records available. Yet although we had copies of all this material, we had never managed to see them live. In fairness, the ‘Screamales’, as they are affectionately known to fans, hail from New Jersey, USA, so a gig within a sensible distance of Manchester is not an everyday event. Even so, we seem to have been playing hide and seek. They only seemed to come here when work commitments took us elsewhere, so the 21st May gig was an opportunity not to be missed.
Fig. 2 The Hollow Bodies. Credit: Hera Says Team
Altogether there were three bands on the bill: the opening act being called ‘The Hollow Bodies’, although they should not be confused with the better known US band of the same name. This incarnation are an all-male four piece and thus lie outside Hera’s remit, but it was in any way difficult to get a fair impression of them as the vocals did not come through the P.A. well. They do not seem to have anything on YouTube as yet, but a number of clips on their Facebook page provide a better insight into their sound.
Fig. 3: ILL. Credit: Hera Says Team
Immediate support act, ‘ILL’, are a local band. They are an all-female four-piece, and a very different animal to ‘The Hollow Bodies’. That said, they are very different to virtually everything else as well. Music fans love to fit artists into recognisable genres, but it doesn’t always work. Some bands are a genre all by themselves, and ‘ILL’ are one such. Their Facebook page contains a lengthy self-definition, from which this is only an extract:
“‘ILL’ is a genre-evading band which believes in the power of disobedient noise. With a repertoire of precarious pop songs and frequent improvised departures, ‘ILL’ revel in the right to be weird, exploring the borders between the funny and the sinister, the personal and the political, the mundane and the surreal.“
You start to get the idea, but not even this glorious mix really covers it. People have called them ‘Punk’ or ‘Post Punk’ and certainly the first impression is of punk attitudes and shouty, often political vocals, mixed with unselfconscious humour. So far so good then, but you soon realise the sheer standard of musicianship behind those voices. This is no “change to the other chord mate” punk band. This lot can really play. They do indeed mix the funny with the sinister, and they are certainly both noisy and weird, but there is so much more. As a bass player myself, I am perhaps more likely than most to listen to the bass parts, but bassist Whitney Bluzma is a joy to listen to and well matched with drummer Fiona Ledgard. The bass can be surprisingly expressive in the right hands; it is just that to all too many it is little more than a metronome. Not to Bluzma, though. With her dynamic style and frequent use of distortion, it can indeed be sinister and brooding, but it can also be driving, mesmeric yet, at times, surprisingly gentle.
Guitar and keyboards complete the band. At the time of the Soup Kitchen gig, the band were in the process of replacing guitarist, Sadie Noble, with Tamsin Middleton, but the latter already seemed to have her musical feet well under the table. Her style suits the band well and she has a particular way with the plectrum slide: a technique that takes more artistry than you might think to be really effective. Harri Shanahan is a versatile keyboardist whose synth work often carries a distinct hint of darkness. She and Bluzma also took the lion’s share of the vocal work, where they were a lot more audible than ‘Hollow Bodies’, although we again got the impression that the P.A. was forcing both to strain their voices. Shanahan filled the role of front-woman, introducing songs with a relaxed mix of self-deprecating humour and political sarcasm, all of which brings us back to what they are like
Imagine a classic punk singer like Poly Styrene (‘X-Ray Spex’) fronting psychedelic, ‘Saucer Full of Secrets’ era ‘Pink Floyd’, then combine the result with virtuoso 1970s Punk/New Age rockers ‘The Here & Now Band‘, or their spin-offs ‘Androids of Mu’. Well, in fairness, they are not really much like any of those, but at the same time, they are a lot more like them than anything else.
The performance itself was breathtaking. ‘ILL’ had released their debut album ‘We are ILL’ just days before the gig and not surprisingly all but three of their eight-song set came off it. The record itself is very well worth buying. We bought our copy on the band’s merch stall afterwards, and it has hardly been out of the player since. Our particular favourite is ‘Slithering Lizards‘: a Prog Rocky monster – almost 10 minutes long. It is hypnotic, yet dynamic; up-tempo, but menacing. It has something of the feel of ‘Trilogy’ period ‘Gong’ at times (albeit without Daevid Allen’s signature glissando guitar – which it would actually rather suit), mixed with traces of Near Eastern fusion towards the end. It is a masterpiece that cannot be easy to play live, but my god they managed – and another highlight was ‘Bears’, which shows Bluzma’s bass at its most melodramatic. Nevertheless, the album did not completely drive out older material and it was good to see the band’s anthemic ‘Kremlin’ still in the set: a song in support of Russian female punk rockers ‘Pussy Riot’ who have been harassed, arrested, and in some cases imprisoned by the Putin regime.
Fig. 4: “ILL” plays Hysteria. Credit Nigel Maitland
‘ILL’ cannot just play – they know how to put on a show: two very different skills which do not always go together. They also know how to pace a show, to bring it to its peak right at the end. There is never any sense of anti-climax: they just build and build. As the old show-biz adage has it: “Always leave them wanting more”. But that is a difficult feat for any support act to pull off because the “more” the audience wants is going to be the band they really came to see: the headliners. ‘ILL’ came as close as is possible, though. Their final song, ‘Hysteria’ (which is also the album finale) is a biting critique of the religious, political and social pressures that seek to control female fertility and sexuality. It is a great song to begin with, but live it sees the band’s already energetic stagecraft fire up the after-burners – Shanahan in particular.
We have grown used to audience attempts to invade rock stages, often in attempts to crowd surf. Shanahan turned the tables and invaded the audience for part of the song, clutching a radio mike and charging in, still singing flat out. She then ran back on stage and made a spirited attempt to strangle Bluzma, who never missed a note even so. In short, they really did leave us wanting more. We are huge ‘Screamales’ fans and were longing to see them, but even we were sad when ‘ILL’ left the stage. Put it this way: they are playing as headliners at the Manchester ‘Deaf Institute’ on 16th June, in a gig to celebrate their new album. And for this one time only, both their incoming and out-going guitarists will be on stage. We already have our tickets.
Fig. 5 Screaming Females at the Soup Kitchen. Credit: Hera Says Team
As for the headliners, what can you say about ‘The Screaming Females’ performance except that it was everything we had hoped it would be? Rock fans whose musical tastes formed in the late 60s or 1970s often bemoan the state of guitar playing in today’s bands. “What happened,” they ask “to the guitar hero? Where are the current generation’s equivalent to the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck or David Gilmore ?” The answer is that they have been replaced by a generation of phenomenal guitar heroines who are often strangely neglected but would be being praised to the heavens if they were men. To name but a few, we have Courtney Barnett, Orianthi, Annie Clark (‘St. Vincent’) and most recently Sarah Longfield, but if we were to ask who the guitar heroines’ guitar heroine might be, the ‘Screamales’ Marissa Paternoster must be a leading candidate. She can solo with the very best, but at the same time, her solos lack the self-indulgence of some of the guitar hero generation. She keeps them shorter and tighter so that they serve the song, not her ego, and they can utterly make even an already great track, such as ‘Criminal Image‘ at the close of the ‘Rose Mountain’ album. She has to be one of the top ten rock guitarists on Earth. Some years ago, ‘Spin’ Magazine rated her as the 77th best guitarist of all time but, frankly, if she was a man it would be more like 7th. If you ever want to see just what the guitar can do, watch her solo on ‘The Screaming Females’ joint performance with ‘Garbage’ of Patti Smith’s ‘Because the Night‘ (from 3:38).
Yet such has been the ‘Screamales’ commitment to the DIY music movement; their insistence on artistic independence and refusal to sell out to major label hype, that you can still see them in a smallish, intimate venue like the ‘Soup Kitchen’ and stand just feet from Paternoster whilst she plays, or indeed right next to all three band members in the audience as they came out to watch the backing bands with everyone else. And how she plays. This is not the record stripped down for ease of use live. This is all-out Marissa Paternoster, blasted straight from her fretboard into your ears. And of course, it is not just Paternoster. Bassist Mike Abbate (generally known as King Mike) and drummer Jarrett Dougherty are both rocking players who form a perfect match for both Paternoster and each other. This is a tight group who are so close they almost read each other’s thoughts, and it shows.
Abbate has a fascinating bass style. He and Paternoster met at a music club in high-school, where she was two years above him. At the time he too was a guitar player but he has told a number of interviewers that he saw her play and thought she was so cool that he just had to be in a band with her. However, he also had no illusions that there was going to be much future for another guitarist in any band that contained her, and so promptly took up the bass. He has become a virtuoso, but his style still has much of the guitarist about it. He often plays melody lines, sometimes exactly following the guitar an octave below, and when Paternoster is soloing, he is known to fill out the sound by playing chords, thus making up for the absence of a rhythm guitarist. Indeed, although Paternoster plays her own rhythm guitar parts on the record, it might be argued that Abbate fills both roles live. Yet he is surprisingly retiring on stage, playing for much of the time with his long curly hair masking his face, or rocking with Dougherty, with his back to the audience.
But musicianship is only part of the story. If Paternoster was simply the guitarist she would be marvel enough, but she is also lead singer and frontwoman, and she really can play complex guitar parts and sing at the same time live just like she does on the records by using multi-tracking. She is famously tiny but her voice is definitely not. She has a commanding mezzo-soprano and although this is a loud band to say the least, she cut through the Soup Kitchen P.A. set-up better than any other singer on the night even though, like everyone else, she was mixed too low, as (slightly) was her guitar. Their musical styles are utterly different but, if anything, her voice is most reminiscent of the late-great Edith Piaf, including the latter’s signature vibrato and, of course, Piaf was even smaller at 4′ 8″. Paternoster is actually not quite as petite as she first appears; she just shares a stage with Abbate: a positive giant who even makes his massive Rickenbacker 4003 bass look like a toy. But whatever the case, she has the charisma to dominate a room. Strangely, her speaking voice stands at odds with her extrovert singing and guitar style. When announcing songs or chatting with the audience she can sound curiously shy, and some of her comments seem almost random until the penny drops that girlish as she may appear, some of her comebacks to shouted audience comments are like gentle whip cracks, often with self-effacing jokes attached. Even compliments are not immune. For example, at one point she was making the almost compulsory statement of how much she loved playing in Manchester. Someone shouted out “We f*****g love you Marissa”, to which she feigned shock and squealed “So much swearing !”: this from someone who in interviews is by no means above fairly fulsome expletives. Another wag shouted out “Love your dress”. For those who don’t know the band, Paternoster has never signed up to the idea that female rock singers need to dress as sexily (for which read scantily) as possible. She dresses extremely modestly, usually in plain dresses of dark brown, or more usually black. Some have puritan style lacy bib fronts, which make them look like something that may have reached America on the ‘Mayflower’, but at the Soup Kitchen, she was in the plainest of plain black. These dresses show precisely zero cleavage and her legs were covered with black tights. Asexual though they are, though, these outfits look great on her and perfectly match her almost black dark hair. But that was not what the sarcy male voice who shouted the comment meant. Paternoster chose to believe otherwise, however, and shot back in her most disarming, little girl voice “Isn’t it cute? And I can wear it for weddings and funerals, too”. It was the gentlest of put-downs and got a cheer from her fans.
Fig.7 Marissa Paternoster and Jarett Dougherty of the Screaming Females. Credit: Hera Says Team
The audience itself showed an impressive age range, from teens to people in their seventies, but it was oddly differentiated, with the bulk of the men standing on the right-hand side of the room, as seen from the stage (Paternoster’s side) and the women more often on the left. Paternoster is openly gay, and there was a sizeable LBGTQ contingent (mostly women) but not disproportionately so, and the average age of the women in the audience was markedly younger than the men. In one thing, though, all were united: they were having a great time.
Like ‘ILL’, the ‘Screaming Females’ have a new album: ‘All At Once’, which came out in February (as usual, Paternoster designed the artwork). Not surprisingly, therefore, we were treated to five of its tracks, including their storming opening and closing numbers: ‘I’ll Make You Sorry‘ and ‘Glass House‘, which are amongst the best songs the band have ever produced. This was less than half their 11 -song set, however. This is a trio with a huge legacy, and older favourites were not neglected – going right back to ‘Boyfriend’ from their 2007 album ‘What If Someone Is Watching Their T.V?’ and coming closer to the present via ‘It all Means Nothing‘ (famous for its video, in which Paternoster is murdered by her bandmates) and ‘Tell Me No’ from ‘Ugly’, plus ‘Empty Head’ and ‘Hopeless’ from 2015’s ‘Rose Mountain’. Only a few were announced from the mike, but every one got a cheer of recognition as it started, from an audience many of whom were then able to sing along apparently word perfect, despite the ‘Screamales’ notoriously obscure lyrics. In short, this was an electrifying performance from one of the most exciting live band around. They are back in Manchester at the ‘Band on the Wall’ on 7th September and, again, we already have our tickets.
Fig. 07 Paternoster’s guitar getting ready to crowd surf. Credit: Hera Says Team
At the end of the show, Paternoster made a moving gesture of trust towards her fans. Her guitar is a G&L S-500, a refinement of the ‘Stratocaster’ that Leo Fender himself developed after selling the Fender company. Some guitar enthusiasts regard this as the ‘Strat’ where Leo finally got it right. They are not exactly a common sight and they are not cheap, but Paternoster learnt on one, which she still has. She loves them and plays little else. On the night she was playing a black model, rather than the natural wood example she is best known for and which she has had since childhood, but it is a precious thing nonetheless. Yet at the end of the show, she pulled out its jack and literally set it adrift into the audience. In effect, the guitar went crowd surfing by itself. It made a tour of the room being passed hand over hand above the audience’s heads, before being dutifully passed back to her unscathed. No one, but absolutely no one, made the slightest attempt to hold onto it or even play it. It was a sight to see.
Hera says I should be the star now 