Album review: The Wytches – Talking Machine

Talking Machine sounds like the inside of a dimly-lit pub where the air constantly looks hazy and the floors are questionably sticky. The fifth album from Brighton’s The Wytches is both ominous yet swanky, and soaked in a confident rock’n’roll sheen. Personified, it’d be a cold figure of a person, a popped-collar with an impressive moustache, perhaps, and sunglasses donned indoors.

The Wytches have managed to conjure up this vibe through their analogue recording, having captured the record with the band playing live all together in the same room, marking the first time they have done so since their 2014 debut, Annabel Dream Reader. It’s old-school and imperfect, a live yet intimate experience, with dashes of inspiration harking back to music across the ’60s through to the ’80s.

From its opening title-track, it rolls in the dirt of dark surf rock and garage rock, with guitars ringing out and drums galloping like a soft yet necessary pulse. In fact, guitar is almost the entire voice of this record, be it within the looming and sulky solo of Factory or the tender acoustic tones of Is The World Too Old? It’s the most prominent figure throughout, and such is the case across much of The Wytches’ back catalogue too. It’s also hard to gauge the stories that lie within these vast and fuzzy tunes, and that may well be intentional, but this album is a listen that is more likely to have you spacing out in a daze than it is fine-tuning in, singing along or unpicking its bones.

There does seem to be a lingering theme of existentialism or some sort of knowing gloom, and ending track Romance certainly leans that way with its eerie strings. On the whole, if a guitar could come to life and smoke a cigarette, this is the kind of album it would make. Fired up with attitude and a dash of gothic coldness, Talking Machine is a dark and dreamy mystery.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: The White Stripes, The Black Keys, Arctic Monkeys

Talking Machine is released on October 10 via Alcopop