2 out of 5

Label: New West Records

Produced by: Andy Putnam

I jumped on to the ATW bandwagon at a point where they were already well established, with 2020s Nothing As the Ideal, and was able to use bandcamp to travel around their discography and confirm that that album wasn’t a lark: in a very crowded scene of southern stoner rock – that draws from Sabbath, and Zeppelin, and so on – All Them Witches had a way of being incredibly affecting and loud without some of the overt showiness or outright mimicry of some of their peers, or those who reignited the hard rock scene a couple decades prior (e.g. Wolfmother, Black Mountain…). I’ve been after a copy of ATW’s debut, Our Mother Electricity, for a while: though its song structures are quite a bit more standard, its got undeniable crunch that gives a great basis for how the band would carry that crunch forward and balance it with some boogie and grooves. But with my aforementioned bandcamp listens, I didn’t want to spoil the whole game; when I’m checking out a back catalog, I’ll go deep on an early release to kind of vet consistency, but it’s spot-checking thereafter, because I kind of want the joy of hearing something for the first-ish time when I can actually nab a physical copy. Thus I skipped over the band’s sophomore release, Lightning at the Door, until I picked up the New West rerelease (the original was self-released) at a later point.

And I find myself confused.

When I do a preamble – which is probably too often – the purpose is to give context if I’m dropping a warmer take; my confusion seems to fit the bill here, since contemporary reviews of Lightning are pretty dern praising, and I’m left to wonder something I often think more and more as I age, which is probably telling: has this reviewer not heard more music?

It’s hard to make that case, since reviews are going to namecheck some of the bands mentioned above, but Lightning, to me, is ATW at a second release crossroads: do we want to keep being the crunchy Southern rock back of our debut, or do we want to push this into something more? and the band split the difference in a way that I find very uncompelling.

Where it does rock, the mimicry of other acts they have proven skilled at avoiding seems to have been picked up after this release, since riffs feel pulled right from, say, Wolfmother, which is already pulled right from other classic rock acts. And where the group tries to stretch out and expand their compositional horizons, it becomes a stoner rock jam band a la Grateful Dead, except… without any real peaks or valleys, just noodling. Paired tracks The Marriage Of Coyote Woman and The Death Of Coyote Woman are both very guilty of this, kicking off with solid jams that peter out, and then the group does a drone thing for the remaining four minutes.

There are a couple of tracks that call forward to ATW’s ability to swing between arena-sized rock and more intimate, emotive grooves: Charles William and closer Mountain aren’t necessarily perfect, both losing steam towards the end, but they are the only tracks that develop the song structure beyond a single riff, and earn my attention throughout.

It’s not that I need every song to necessarily cycle through highs and lows, or rock my socks off; I think the format I’m criticizing is perfectly valid, depending on sequencing, and also depending on the overall mood of an album, but Lightning sets us up for epic moments with its woozy lead-in track and the opening tear on followup When God Comes Back, that to then rely on the jam-band vibes is tonally confusing. Multiple spins don’t solve this for me: when I realize I’m repeatedly tuning out entire sections of an album, I tend to find the source is that the music isn’t grabbing me, not that I’m not listening closely enough.

So why did this work for other listeners and not me? Good question. Maybe the bluesy, stoner rock scene of the early 00s is just more frequently in my playlist than theirs; maybe I don’t like Grateful Dead – true. Maybe I’m more sensitive to Andy Putnam’s production not really capturing the range of the quieter moments, nor playing up the swelling keys and jam band business to a more noisy effect. It’s just a very undefined album to my ears, surrounded by albums with much more definition.

The NWR rerelease includes some bonus tracks – they’re both instrumental, and slot in with the overall style of the album, so don’t necessarily add anything if, like me, it’s not a favorite ATW release. Sequentially, they add buffer the conclusion after Mountain, which would’ve been a preferred closer, so maybe some additional negative impact on sequencing.