Frankie and The Witch Fingers Unveil New Seven- Minute Single “Empire” and Releases New Album “Data Doom”
Photo Credit: Henry CalvertFrankie and the Witch Fingers released their new album “DATA DOOM” on September 1st, 2023.
"Empire" is the new track from Los Angeles psych-punk quartet Frankie and the Witch Fingers. They released their seventh studio album Data Doom on September 1 via The Reverberation Appreciation Society / Greenway Records. A seven-minute preview of the upcoming album, "Empire" kicks off the album with some apocalyptic lyrics and pure energy. With its riff-laden psychedelic mayhem, the accompanying video perfectly captures the essence of the track.
Known for their ecstatically wild live shows and layered, visionary recordings, Frankie and the Witch Fingers have earned their throngs of global fans with their progressively expansive albums, innumerable live dates on an ever-growing list of continents, and performances with Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Cheap Trick, ZZ Top and more (not to mention their impressive headline dates). With Data Doom, the band is poised to welcome even more uninitiated into the fold – it’s their most eclectic work yet, while remaining undeniably cohesive, and they’re supporting it with the biggest headline shows they’ve ever played.
With a pure psych-rock sound that hits both on a primal and ecstatically mind-bending level, Frankie and the Witch Fingers have become an outright force. Afrobeat and proto-punk inspired the Los Angeles-based four-piece to craft a sublimely galvanizing sound on their new album Data Doom, a powerful vessel for their frenetic meditations on technological change rampant, fascism creeping in, and corrupt power structures. Animated by the explosive energy they’ve brought to the stage in sharing bills with such eclectic acts as Ty Segall and ZZ Top, the result is a major leap forward for one of the most adventurous and forward-thinking bands working today.
It is the first album released by Frankie and the Witch Fingers that features bassist Nikki “Pickle” Smith (formerly of Death Valley Girls) and drummer Nick Aguilar (previously a touring drummer for punk legend Mike Watt), which is rooted in the cerebral yet viscerally commanding songwriting of co-founders Dylan Sizemore (vocals, guitar) and Josh Menashe (lead guitar, synth). As a result of each new member's distinct sensibilities, the band created their most rhythmically complex work to date. Smith relied heavily on her extensive background in West African drumming (which she learned from her music-instructor parents), while Aguilar leaned heavily on formative influences like Tony Allen, who served as drummer for Fela Kuti for years. In the end, Data Doom was self-produced and recorded directly to tape by Menashe in their Southeast Los Angeles studio. The rehearsal space, with Frankie and the Witch Fingers allowing themselves unlimited time to explore their most magnificently strange impulses.
Featuring nine high-wattage tracks constructed with both dizzying complexity and unfettered imagination, Data Doom displays the expansive and fantastically eccentric musicality of previous releases like 2020's Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters... On “Mild Davis,” for instance, the band shares a gloriously spaced-out track inspired by a piece from Miles Davis’s early-’70s electric period, cycling through a vast whirlwind of rhythms and textures and wildly spellbinding guitar parts.
“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.”
Meanwhile, Sizemore’s lyrics shift between savagely despairing the state of the world and resolutely dreaming of a brighter future. “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.”
Data Doom opens Empire with the epic majesty of "Empire," which is followed by the band's first track that is written together: "Burn Me Down," an irresistibly jittery track that perfectly encapsulates the album's transcendent collision of blistering riffs and polyrhythmic grooves. Aguilar's breakneck drumming is the foundation of Frankie and the Witch Fingers' hit single "Electricide." One of several songs featuring Menashe on sax, “Syster System” slips into a hypnotically fluid tempo as Frankie and the Witch Fingers muse on the possibilities of partnership culture (a concept introduced by futurist Riane Eisler in her seminal book The Chalice and the Blade).
Frankie and the Witch Fingers enlisted the help of Italian illustrator Carlo Schievano and UK graphic designer Jordan Warren to design the cover art for Data Doom (a co-release with Greenway Records and the Reverberation Appreciation Society). This culminated in an elaborate mixed-media piece complete with a language decoder and its own language system.
“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”
Not only an echo of the album’s endlessly immersive quality, Data Doom’s visual component reflects the band’s devotion to unbridled collaboration in all aspects of the creative process.
“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… 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.”
Empire Burn Me Down Electricide Syster System Weird Dog Doom Boom Futurephobic Mild Davis Political CannibalismAs the band recently completed a massive European tour, it recently announced a series of upcoming U.S. headline shows, including performances at Warsaw in Brooklyn and The Troubadour in Los Angeles. A full listing of dates has been announced below.
Prior to their latest album release, Los Angeles psych-punk quartet Frankie and the Witch Fingers hit a massive milestone with their latest performance on KEXP’s The Midday Show with Cheryl Waters, which the video will be released to the public soon to all viewers.a
“Frankie and the Witch Fingers have rarely sounded tighter and more inventive as they do on Data Doom, kicking against a desensitized world with sharpened musical sensibilities. The future may look bleak, but Frankie and the Witch Fingers march toward it boldly on their most complex and intense album to date.”
“The high points are truly soaring on Data Doom, as an energized Frankie and the Witch Fingers use the groove and aggression of a new low-end combination to launch from, crafting dynamic, unique, stratosphere-spanning offerings.” All of this follows SPIN’s earlier comments praising the album’s “conga-flecked Afrobeat (“Doom Boom”) to horn-fueled rave-ups (“Burn Me Down,” “Weird Dog”) and propulsive, Devo-style synth-rock (“Futurephobic”),” and FLOOD’s love for its “frigid new wave pulses and staccato vocal deliveries.”
