Author: macario

      WITCHES VALLEY was a french spectacular band from the past which rages wildly between 1986 & 1992 → Rolling stones between folk, western, «psychedelic» surf and anthracite mauve blue garage ← Sensual & torrid dating melting H.P.Lovecraft, Lux Interior, Ennio Morricone, Dick Dale, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Flipper, Butthole Surfers, Dalton Trumbo, Divine, Kirk Douglas, B.B.King & Link Wray in the wind of the plains of unpatented aromatic herbs → Something went wrong in the Wonderful Western land !!!

• Escaped from the magical world of Hollywood westerns & fantasy movies, WITCHES VALLEY had more to do with the skinned & uprooted characters that americana cinema has provided us with since the pre∼war period than with the heroines of comic books. Already, when the combo begun in ’86, he presented all the symptoms of the defect. Thier debut single, copiously edited in 1989 via the label GO GET ORGANIZED and cleverly titled «And This Way Red Neck, Do You Like It ?» { Recently reedited (with one bonus from their unique album) & remasterised within our second boxset Dont Worry Be Angrry → That you can listen on the player above }, make discover a garage band both rigorous & anguished. But that was after having lapped his repertoire by opening for groups such as the Hard∼Ons, NoMeansNo  or False Prophets (…), it’s  on stage that Witches Valley found its deep true dimension, allying country, hardcore, psyche & noisy∼pop  to its deliberately paradoxical game, still hesitating between naive ballad & distorted savagery. In live∼act, they created a climate of biting bestiality with a lot of fuzz guitar & bass feedback mixing oppressive atmosphere & beauty. Their tribal identity was visually expressed through the erotic ambiguity of their singer, reminding early crazy Elvis  and inevitably The Cramps ; A violence that was not altered, but rather powered by convoluted structures where unexpected breaks transformed a song into four or five highlights…

• Evolving in a hubbub that is both intellectual & spontaneous, they were a kind of Lucky Luke  revisiting Paul Morissey & Russ Meyer → We found there the same attraction for the disgust and the futile. The culmination of this perilous cruise was a debut album called «Extreme Return To The Source» { out in 1990 on AUTO DA FÉ Records } which traced, against the backdrop of an almost Hollywood  musical fresco, the unstoppable insanity of an adventure populated by murders & ancestral legends → The voices were colorful and the hues were multiple, from honeyed to howled, supported by female choirs of innoncent & perverse go go girls → An omnipresent organ —or discreet according to the titles— reinforced the hallucinogenic character inseparable from the screeching à la Sonic Youth  & candor à la Pixies → All supported by a battery either hardcore, than sixties ← Bringing together these two genres and closing the loop >>> from the sixties to the nineties, isn’t there just a six to return ? Combining emotion & irritation in their image as in their music, Witches Valley was both painful & pleasant → Something was wrong with this bunch of unhealthy yéyés, with these femme fatales cheerleaders lost in this music and these slobbering voices…

• Definitivly, something goes wrong & that’s smell good.

↓ ↑ Photos → Laurent Cassagne