The Wytches - Talking Machine

Perhaps unexpectedly for a band whose name was built on an ability to channel a restless anxiety into song, tracks sitting permanently on a knife-edge ready to turn at a moment’s notice, the gut-punch of fifth album ‘Talking Machine’ comes courtesy of one of its most subtle moments: Kristian Bell’s repetitive, resigned vocal delivery on ‘Don’t Make It For Me’ is all the more emotionally effective for its lack of volume in direct contrast to all he’s screamed before. Similarly, the Beatles-esque melody that crops up in ‘Is The World Too Old’ shows a far softer - songier - side to the band, but it’s where these less sonically intense moments meld seamlessly with the band’s longstanding doomy rock that the record peaks: ‘Black Ice’, on which trademark guitar sounds meet a vocal take that evokes late-‘90s Britrock; the swirling ‘Nothing To See’; and ‘Perform’, where a brooding frustration builds from distorted vocals, the track shape-shifting from dark waltz to a crescendo akin to what one might imagine Queens of the Stone Age would sound like if they’d not seen daylight in six months. This wider gaze doesn’t always click completely: the dream-like prog nods of ‘Romance’ are wholly forgettable (so much that its piano-led reprise later - closer ‘Romance 2’ - while affectively pained, doesn’t make for an immediate callback). Still, in being interesting for what it’s not - while remaining unquestionably them - it’s a commendable addition to The Wytches’ canon.