Track: Frankie and the Witch Fingers – Tea, plus UK dates

L.A.’s Frankie And The Witch Fingers share new single ‘Tea’

Raving rock maniacs Frankie and the Witch Fingers are back with a potent dose of “Tea,” the storming b-side of a new 7″ due in May from Let’s Pretend—three hundred lavender-vinyl copies only! Starts like Black Sabbath, then overdrives right into “Black To Comm”—why play around with caffeine when you can just metabolize this? (The above visual video—an extremely visual video!—is by analog-lightbenders Astral Violet.)West Coast screamers Frankie and the Witch Fingers trade on a tradition built up from the very fabric of psychedelic soul. Shot through with the same melted juke jitters that sent Doug Sahm, The 13th Floor Elevators and The Pretty Things scratching through the record needles of every child indebted to the vibrational cathedral, the L.A. crew comes barreling into 2017 with their own brand of heatstroke mojo. The band’s latest LP, Brain Telephone, is an acid bath for the soul delivered in pulsating waves via fuzz guitar. It’s an electric jolt to the endocrine system, shaking the last dregs of reluctance out of your system and inducing bouts of dance euphoria.

The band, C. Dylan Sizemore (vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter), Glenn Brigman (drums, organ), Alex Bulli (bass), and Josh Menashe (lead guitar and backing vocals), has spent the past few years crawling around the heat-swamped corners of L.A.’s sweatbox circuit, honing the gospel across 2013’s Sidewalk, 2015’s eponymous album, pumping straight motor oil through the veins of 2016’s neon meltdown, Heavy Roller and last years full length Brain Telephone. They took the circus on the road, pounding every last inch of varnish from their weary husks from the heartland to the Bay. They’re thrumming on a new vibration that’s found it’s way to them on a light beam ripped into their deepest subconscious.