The sixth studio effort from the mercurial Nashville psych-rockers,
Nothing as the Ideal
sees
All Them Witches
reunite with
Dying Surfer Meets His Maker
producer
Mikey Allred
for a bold and bracing collection of songs that plays to all of their strengths. Paired down to a trio after the departure of keyboard player
Jonathan Draper
, the band have crystallized their signature amalgam of improvisation and songcraft into an exclamation point where every soaring lead, snare crack, and mechanical whirr feels essential. Recorded at Abbey Road in London, the eight-track set makes good use of the legendary studio's analog infrastructure, peppering the proceedings with fragmented loops and rewinding reels, all the while maintaining a radiant classic rock core. It's also the group's heaviest outing to date. Bruising opener "Saturnine & Iron Jaw" arrives via a wash of wheezy electronics before locking into a meaty
Kyuss
-meets-
Masters of Reality
groove. The propulsive "Enemy Is My Enemy" follows suit, peddling its
Sabbathy
wares with precision and sonic might, while the nearly ten-minute "See You Next Fall" emerges from its Twin Peaks fever dream of an intro into a burly existential blues odyssey fleshed out by some truly wonderful guitar work and a trippy drum solo finale.
ATW
have always maintained an impressive command of atmosphere, and the immersive
is no exception, with the hymn-like instrumental "Everest" and the eerie mountain-folk fable "Children of Coyote Woman" (a callback to a pair of cuts from 2013's
Lightning at the Door
) conjuring mood with shamanistic prowess. "Rats in Ruin," which feels like an omnibus of everything that precedes it, closes the album in spectacular fashion, delivering a ruminative stadium-sized waltz that descends into a droning musique concrete-inspired midsection, before reassembling itself as a Category 5 hurricane intent on making landfall in the nosebleed section. ~ James Christopher Monger