Esben And The Witch
Wash The Sins Not Only The Face

Beautiful sensations, beautiful reminiscences. You know those NON revolutionary bands, NON innovative, NON potentially seminal, but which somehow manage to give you a lovely afternoon? Music serves this purpose too, indeed, we might say it should mostly serve this purpose. With graceful moves, the English band Esben and the Witch touch upon our existence, and it doesn't matter if it's only for a moment.

There are many ways to talk about a work. When discussing the latest work of Esben and the Witch, I try to start from the wrong point of view, that of reminiscences (because my passionate and somewhat biased judgment is based on them, and only on them): do you remember the Third and the Mortal?, do you remember their debut "Tears Laid in Earth"?, those snowy landscapes?, those plains and those barren trees whitened by snow? And in between, that nightingale-like voice? And the subsequent works "In This Room" and "Memoirs"?, in which the forward-thinking Norwegian band, in a land where black-metal was the trend, dared to free themselves even from the boundaries of the gothic-doom of the ethereal debut to embrace post-rock, electro-noir, and jazz sounds?

Let's be clear: Esben and the Witch have nothing to do with metal, not even with that which sounds the least like metal, yet they have the merit of evoking sensations in me like bands such as Anathema, Katatonia, The Gathering do. It's not even right to think that the three guys from Brighton were inspired by these bands, but rather that they share similar tastes. But to talk about influences is to persist in error: Esben and the Witch is a hybrid territory, where dark-wave, post-punk, post-rock, goth-rock, ambient, electronic, dream-pop cross paths, all blended with incredible coherence and spontaneity, so much so that in the end, it will be very difficult for you to define or categorize them into a specific genre, although they don't invent anything new (nor can it be said that they shamelessly mimic any particular artist).

Let's take the enchanted (not too bewitched) voice of Rachel Davies, who sings with such a naturalness that it almost seems like a man. Clearly, I'm not referring to the tone (very feminine that), but to the modest and sober approach: finally!, we can say, here we are not faced with a woman who must be a prima donna! Let me explain: "rock," if it's not male, is very male-oriented, and where a singer has managed to make a name, it happened because she had to be truly extraordinary (something that doesn't often happen with male colleagues). Finally, now a girl who doesn't want to be the new Janis Joplin, the new Patti Smith, the new Nico, the new Siouxsee, the new Bjork. Okay, she's a bit PJ Harvey, and indeed, the girl admits to having listened to her a lot during the recording of the album, but if PJ Harvey she must be, she is so gracefully, sweetly, slyly, and thus not even PJ Harvey can be taken as a true yardstick. And so it is, Rachel Davies captivates for her skill and because she doesn't need to do somersaults to assert herself: she is nothing but the perfect compendium for the show put together by her two companions, Thomas Fisher (on guitar: an elegant, eclectic touch, oscillating between delicate arpeggios and refined textures reminiscent of the eighties) and Daniel Copeman (divided between keyboards, synthesizers, and electronic beats).

We come to the album: "Wash the Sins Not Only the Face", released in 2013, is the second work by Esben and the Witch, following the promising debut "Violet Cries" of 2011. A young band, then, but already prematurely mature. "Wash the Sins Not Only the Face" carries within it a miraculous balance: perfect sounds, perfectly calibrated production, a perfect balance between fullness and emptiness, sonic stratifications that are sublime, a continuous shifting of planes, the contemplative and the psychological ones, a unique interpenetration between naturalistic pathos and internal landscapes. "World" and perception merge and blur continuously, as it happens in the best David Lynch films: and what a nice compliment this would be for the three musicians, who among other things consider themselves fervent admirers of the American director's work. The fact is that this too is a misleading element, because, on an explicit level, there is very little lynchian in the music of Esben and the Witch, convinced that their fundamental influences should be sought not in music but in cinema and literature.

Let's therefore restart from what could have been the best starting point: the name of the band, which is not a suggestive gimmick to attract gullible folks in search of the latest electro-dark trash with a female voice, but draws inspiration from a Danish traditional tale. And down from there, passing through myths, beliefs, legends, the mysticism of folklore, the imagery that carries all the Gothic and Romantic English literature of the nineteenth century. From here one must start: for as "modern" (made of electronics and rock, of synthetic and sometimes even rough sounds) the music of the trio becomes evocative and ancestral, carrying with it an echo of disquieting esotericism that is never pronounced enough to make one scream in fear. The music of Esben and the Witch is a dream that narrates itself, and it doesn't matter if the cards on the table posed by the music scene of the 2010s, during full overdose of revivalism, aren't changed: I would say we can be content with the emotions. The reminiscences.

In truth, the album starts on the wrong foot, with the track I personally like the least: the very fast rhythms with which "Iceland Spar" opens are at the very least misleading: its elementary structure (the mathematical alternation of reckless speed and ambient pauses), its brief duration (not even three minutes) were perhaps not the best or most representative way to start. The tracks that follow, on the other hand, show us a different band, dynamic and careful to enhance each detail within even complex compositions rich in atmosphere changes. Already the second track "Slow Wave" opens with guitar geometries that recall Fripp's "Discipline" (so there's still a bit of eighties lacquer): intelligent rhythms, jazz-infused guitar phrases, the brilliant solutions adopted in arrangements are the intriguing path upon which glide the dreamy stories of Rachel Davies, lost in the mazes of a dreamlike landscape suspended between folklore and mystery, childlike wonder and witch-like evocation. Throughout "Wash the Sins Not Only the Face," we won't find the episode that makes a difference, as it lives on a multitude of precious details, moments that fade into others, with grace, elegance, a sound flow portrayed in soft colors, tending towards melancholy, a veiled romanticism, a pained epicness, never forgetting the lessons of the eighties wave.

"Shimmering," "Deathwaltz" (the first single), "Yellow Wood," and "Despair," lined up one after the other, are a nice four of a kind, a significant overview of the potentials expressed by the Brighton band. The first three recall the latest Anathema on more than one occasion, without ever explicitly calling them out, both in their more meditative moments (in their cinematic splendor worthy of the more introspective Pink Floyd) and in the adrenaline-driven accelerations; the fourth, instead, dares to plunge the knife into the cacophony of post-punk that in the chorus derails beyond the limits of dissonance. All executed with crystalline precision, immersed in clear sounds, yet without sacrificing emotional impact (that is always present!).

In the over seven minutes of the final "Smashed to Pieces in the Still of the Night," finally, the narration of the three reaches unheard-of peaks of descriptive ability, imaginative poetry, visionary impulse: a dramatic descent and ascent along steep emotional paths, an apparent calm, betrayed, overwhelmed in the finale by unexpected detonations of the electric guitar (still powerful and visionary post-rock) and by apocalyptic choruses that suddenly bring us back to the violence explored with the initial "Iceland Spar."

The circle therefore closes, and we are fortunately allowed to relive the experience, even just for a moment more, with a simple and gentle press of the play button.

Beautiful emotions, beautiful reminiscences.