And on the 8th day God created teeth, and The Wytches had something to rattle.
After half a decade of making music and numerous Covid related delays The Wytches have finally released their third album, ‘Three Mile Ditch’, and I am pleased to report it is as dirty and electrifying as any release yet. I caught up with Kris on release day to talk about how it’s felt to finally release the album. “Its good, it’s quite a strange time to be releasing things because obviously I’m just sat in the house. It’s just nice for it to finally be out though it’s been done for so long.”
Three Mile Ditch at its most aggressive is Meat Chuck, a choppy berserker of a track with a riff that’ll stay in your head for days and vocals that flirt with being on the aggressive side of an old FIDLAR album. At its most relaxed is the menacing cut Midnight Ride, which always feels like there’s something big coming, leaving the listener riddled with anxiety, only to be slowly put to sleep as the guitar scratches subside and the drums fadeout. Both of these songs were written “Between recording sessions” but you wouldn’t guess they were nearly not on the album, with them both sticking out as high points on an already well rounded album.
“The Wytches have always been strictly a live album style band, the first two albums were just done live. It gets quite stressful when one of you thinks ‘Ive nailed it’ but someone else isn’t happy you’d have to re-do things, it used to get a bit stressful. But on this one we got the bass and drums done at the same time and then we were able to just build it up from there.” Frontman Kris told me, you could’ve fooled me though. Anxiety is woven into this album, at times making you feel one wrong note away from a breakdown and yet it is more mature than their debut. This isn’t teenage angst, this is grown up, raging adult hopelessness! Its fucking incredible that some of these songs were written 3 years apart and they still make up a familiar Wytches sound that holds together so well. ‘You Looked Happy to Me’, the slow off the blocks, explosive closer, was written over three years ago as a result of “A time where I was struggling to write anything. I just sat in my garage for the whole day just failing on everything I was trying. It helped me learn that sitting there and keeping on trying, the probability that you’ll actually come up with something good is so much greater. I guess I took it from there where I was just being as patient as I can be.”
There really isn’t much else to say except The Wytches are back and they’re here to stay! They’ve been able to blend the best of the debut and their sophomore to create an aggressive, raw album that has a depth and consistency to it. Anyone with a set of ears can see they are the forefathers to what is happening in the thriving independent scenes across the country right now and this album is comfortably one of the best to come out of the UK this year. God knows we needed it.
