Muthi’s new album, Witchcraft (stream it at your service of choice here), dropped today on London-based Dirty Melody Records, and I’ve been anticipating its arrival ever since I discovered his debut album, 2021’s Visions.
Muthi’s music as a whole is a high form of psychedelic art that confronts raw, touchy, sometimes dark, subjects in sex and death with a bit of satire, giving it edginess that’s not always there in the popular psychedelic rock genre.
The music uses distortion, effects and song-writing to, as the album’s press release puts it, dive “further into the shadows and glow of modern life: nocturnal adventures, late-night drives, flickers of paranoia, altered states, and the fragile relief of emerging on the other side more-or-less intact, a little wiser, a little stranger, and undeniably transformed.”
Sophomore albums can put pressure on artists that can be detrimental — and while it takes more time than I’ve had with this album to say it’s better or worse than Visions, I’ll say it certainly has lived up to my own expectations (not that that matters).
Muthi and McBaise. PHOTO BY DEREK BREMNER; PROVIDED BY DIRTY MELODY RECORDS
The latest single from the album, “Angeline,” was released a week ago and has already occupied ear worm status in my head, but more on that song below.
I didn’t realize that Mcbaise (the musical muse of Matthieu Bessudo) was half of the collaborative firepower behind the project until I did an interview with lead protagonist Matt Christensen earlier this year. Check that out here.
Christensen, a multi-instrumentalist, writes all of the music, sings the vocals and plays guitar and drums throughout.
Witchcraft comes only a few weeks after Mcbaise released Wrongderful.
Mcbaise provides his signature bass and synth work throughout Witchcraft. Bessudo’s alter ego as illustrator, McBess, also produced the album artwork for the 10-track Witchcraft.
“Angeline” is my favorite song these two have shared writing credits on since the wickedly dark and distorted “Cobra,” which appeared on Mcbaise’s last LP, Tubes. Muthi also recently got credit on “Cold Cuts,” a single off Wrongderdful.
The video for “Cobra” has me stoked for the music video for “Angeline,” slated to drop Nov. 28.
“Angeline” is a tale of a mysterious “goofy-footed fox” who owns a “run-down mountain-side shebeen (an illegal bar)” and takes shots “like it’s just another sip from a mountain stream.”
Christensen does have a knack for writing catchy choruses, as is evident on “Missionary Impossible,” which also features some filthy bass work from Mcbaise and some of Christensen’s funky guitar riffs.
“Just another Saturday night,
How can it be so wrong
when it feels so right”
Christiansen and Bessudo recently launched a podcast called “Lust & Shame & Wine.”
On a recent episode, they were joking about their shift from making metal music (in bands such as Heavy Menthol and Dead Pirates) to what Christensen laughingly referred to as a musical genre as “sex.”
And, sure, a lot this music has a sexual vibe, a sexiness to it that would go well as a soundtrack to bedroom escapades or play well as porn background music.
But not all of the writing is suggestive, nor is it raunchy.
It’s tasteful even on the suggestively titled, “Labial Fanfare.”
There is no lewdness even as the song starts out with, “It tasted sticky sweet, if nothing else it made me reconsider therapy.”
We end up with one of the gems of the album as Christensen’s dope guitar phrasing, induced with what is likely a chorus pedal, leads us to a catchy line about “all the kings and the prophets.”
“Angeline” was preceded by the singles, “Palissades,” title-track “Witchcraft,” which features trumpeter Angela Strandberg, and “This Could Be It.”
I discussed the title track with Christensen in that aforementioned interview, and he did open up. You’ll have to scroll through that piece, which I’ll link again here, to see what he said.
All four of these songs made for good singles, but there are plenty of goods throughout the album, which ends on two of its best tracks, “Late Night Visitations” and the instrumental “Soft Landings,” titled with what I believe is a drug reference.
Visitations has some wah-wah funk carrying us along to maybe the funkiest, most distorted guitar solos on the entire album.
“Soft Landings” features a lot of funky bass and trippy synths from Mcbaise, along with Christensen’s drum and guitar work. I wish it were longer, but I do like the way it fades out for a minute on a looping keyboard sequence.
I look forward to spending more time with Witchcraft and future releases from muthi.