Witching Waves Streams & Waterways

Orange vinyl limited to 500 copies - Fourth album from UK post-punk band, Witching Waves. For an album that hits with an instant rush of fuzz-fuelled energy, the gestation time for Witching Waves' Streams and Waterways has been somewhat more protracted. A blistering advancement of the knife-sharp hooks and urgently efficient post-punk structures that they've spent over a decade refining since their formation in 2011, the band's fourth album - and second on Specialist Subject - emerges from a period of flux for the band's chief songwriting partnership of Emma Wigham (drums/vocals) and Mark Jasper (guitar/vocals). "Streams and Waterways is about the struggle of looking at the clock, realising it's actually going pretty damn fast and knowing that really you have no control over anything" Jasper confirms. Perhaps that explains the way that opener The Valley doesn't even introduce itself before careering into a full-throttled, three-minute scuzzy rager that would approach the descriptor anthemic had it not been kicked and scuffed along the way; it's maybe why the wiry, ferocious Choice You Make feels like a charge into a storm despite the uncertainty of what you might find. It's perhaps why even when Witching Waves allow themselves respite on the pared down Open A Hole, there's a churning anxiety that lies below the acoustic guitar and harmonising vocals: in many ways musically and thematically Witching Waves are relinquishing the control that's always been a fixture of their music - with all the thrilling and nervous fallout that comes from that. Although the pair have since returned south (having relocated to Exeter), Streams and Waterways also serves as a document of their foray northwards. The surviving artefact from Jasper's never-to-be-finished studio that he'd began to build in Yorkshire - following the ending of his London-based Sound Savers studio - the record is also the first to feature current bassist Will Fitzpatrick, who joined initially live on their support tour with Australian punks Camp Cope. Fitzpatrick - a key component of Liverpool's DIY scene for two decades - quickly became a key part of the writing process. Recording sessions were done during periods of lockdown that allowed congregation, Jasper recalling a still unborn Ivy kicking hard during an early mix playback of It's A Shame's layered noise rock assault.