Frankie and the Witch Fingers Share New Single "Futurephobic"
Psychedelic punk band Frankie and the Witch Fingers have dropped a new music video for the song “Futurephobic.” The track is off their upcoming album Data Doom set to be released on September 1st via The Reverberation Appreciation Society / Greenway Records. The mind-bending sci-dystopian music video captures the experimental artistry that has come to be associated with Frankie and the Witch Fingers.
“The main riff was an idea we came up with during the writing process for our album Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters… but we kept it in our back pockets, as it wasn’t quite fitting in with the theme of that album,” the band explains. “When we started writing Data Doom, it reemerged very organically, and everyone latched onto the idea surprisingly fast and ran with it. We expanded on the main riff and came up with the other parts and overall arrangement while writing with our new lineup in our studio in LA. The whole process went surprisingly smoothly. We added backing vocals and overdubs while on tour last year in Europe, doing all the passes to complete the song from various apart-hotels, attics in France and Amsterdam.”
The hard-working band are currently on a world tour playing before enthusiastic fans across Europe and Canada. A headlining US tour has just been announced. The band will play such renowned venues as The Troubadour in their native Los Angeles and Warsaw in New York City.
Frankie and the Witch Fingers are known for their blending of musical styles and DIY attitude. Data Doom shows the band going even further in experimenting with style and sound. This is evident in tracks such as “Mild Davis,” which was inspired by jazz legend Miles Davis’s electric period in the early seventies.
“We worked on that for two weeks straight, puzzle-piecing together different parts into one very weird and stream-of-consciousness song that’s mostly in a 7/4 time signature.”
The lyrics to “Mild Davis” were written by vocalist and guitarist Dylan Sizemore. The song presents a dire and bleak view of the current state of the world yet remains optimistic for the future of humanity.
“I wrote the lyrics to ‘Mild Davis’ in a moment of feeling pessimistic about what technology is doing to our society, especially as AI is creeping to the forefront more and more,” says Sizemore. “But then the bridge comes from a more optimistic perspective, where it’s questioning whether we could reboot the whole system and start all over.”
Frankie and the Witch Fingers often take inspiration outside of the musical world and delve into more intellectual matters. On “Syster System” took inspiration from a classic book on society and gender roles, The Chalice and the Blade written by futurist Riane Eisler.
“Riane Eisler talks about how our society has a very masculine energy that manifests as the need to exert power, which she refers to as dominator culture,” Sizemore explains. “The alternative to that is partnership culture, which has a feminine energy that’s more symbiotic with nature. The idea behind ‘Syster System’ is that if we could bring that energy into technology, it could help make everything more harmonious.”
Other standout songs on Data Doom include the epic opening track, “Empire.” The song “Burn Me Down,” simultaneously rocks heavy with killer riffs and grooves with a polyrhythmic style.
The track “Electricide,” has Frankie and the Witch Fingers returning to their punk roots. “Political Cannibalism,” would make a wonderfully unlikely dance hit.
Frankie and the Witch Fingers benefits from a talented rhythm section in bassist Nikki “Pickle” Smith (Death Valley Girls) and drummer Nick Aguilar (Mike Watt). Smith’s background in West African drumming gives Frankie and the Witch Fingers a rich and unique rhythmic style. Aguilar’s influences include Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen which is evident in the funkiness of many of the tracks.
Frankie and the Witch Fingers also take consideration into the visual aspect of the band. The group recruited illustrator Carlo Schievano and designer Jordan Warren to assemble mixed-media piece artwork for Data Doom which includes its own language system and decoder.
“It was really fascinating to see two different artistic voices working together to make something so unique, with all these hidden elements for people to figure out.”
This high level of collaboration and experimentation is why Frankie and the Witch Fingers is one of the most fascinating bands right now. Data Doom represents the band at its most interesting and engaging.
“There was no pressure and no real-time constraint for this record, and because of that the creativity flowed in a very free way that probably wouldn’t have happened if we’d been on the clock in a studio,” says Sizemore. “It showed us that the more we take the time to communicate and share our ideas with each other, the more it feeds our creative energy and helps us to make something we’re all really excited about.”
