The Cave Singers – No Witch

Can you picture what will be, so limitless and free, as Krieger cracks around the softly perched arrangements to remind the monochromatic melodies and random surprises that to linger in the untrained ear requires eye-level insights?

Plunk. Pling. Clang. “Falls,” “Outer Realms” and “Haller Lake” form a liturgic triad awaiting the room to settle from aftershocks that supersede jangly-jang volume to weight cruise-control gearshift invocations of grim and garish quarter-note vulnerability. It’s more P.F. Sloan than P.J. Harvey, and oooooh, it makes me wonder: is it reincarnation or merely that recognizable? Pete Quirk’s vocals have a carhop-cushioned mobility, modestly recited from the tablets of right about now. Effortless folk-yawned teasers from the adopted reconciliation of post-mortified protest against chicken-scratched music ensconced in a cheap motel. Which works in spite of itself.

These songs should be hits, and the hits should be TKOs, especially “Distant Sures,” its bristled Donovan direction clear and simple, closely followed by that west Texas hellridden sitar sound on “Faze Wave,” while the time-eaten tour bus walks along the shoulder of another hidden highway as Quirk quick-draws out his words. I’ve been there before, and it seems like blessed assurance has levitated the horizon above the god of gates.

The Cave Singers
No Witch
[Jagjaguwar]