Press
Seductively intimate and yet luxuriantly orchestral, they're simply an absolutely fantastic
pop group.
Ronan Munro, Nightshift cover interview (August 2007)
Quite possibly the best band in Oxford.
Dave Gilyeat, BBC Radio Oxford
A complex, multi-instrumentalist take on the dark-edged pop music of bands like Sparklehorse
and American Music Club, but managing to develop a sound all of their own, with fragile vocals delivering strange, sinister lyrics, growling guitars, creepy rhythms,
trumpet and glockenspiel.
Simon Minter - diskant.net interview
Heart of Stone reviews
Witches cannot be faulted, each of these songs is a perfectly written statement drenched in emotion.
Frankie Johnson, Oxfordshire Music Scene (April 2008)
A wonderfully produced album full of textures and subtleties, which will hopefully see
Witches off to a brilliant start indeed.
Katy Jerome, Nightshift (September 2007)
Ladies and Gentleman, we have a winner. Without a doubt, the finest
record to come out of Oxford this year must be the Witches' album Heart of Stone, a record that is alternately and simultaneously beautiful, mysterious, violent,
plaintive and wondrous.
Colin MacKinnon, oxfordbands.com
One of those albums that makes you think and provokes emotion.
Russell Barker (January 2008)
A strong Tom Waits vibe of drunken late-night liaisons and relationships gone awry
..gentle vocals riding atop a wave of synths and subtle guitar work detailed with dainty glockenspiel ..the songs contained on this sampler all show great promise
and point to an enchanting album to come.
Alex - initforthemoney.net
Josef's Lament.. is everything you should love about
Witches: instantly familiar, but packed with fresh detail revealing itself on each fresh listen.. one of the albums of the year is coming your way soon.
Holy Temperature - oxfordbands.com
In the Chaos of a Friday Night reviews
Melodic, intricate, noisy, emotionally direct, this record
is a multi-layered joy.
Gordon Murphy - oxfordbands.com
Determined and ambitious stuff.
Simon Minter - www.diskant.net
From Nought to Nick Drake, The Velvet Underground to Belle and Sebastian in the space of
ten minutes. That's going some by any standards.
Dale Kattack - Nightshift (March 2006)
Live reviews
The band rip through a blinding set peppered with new songs. Live there's an extra dimension to tunes such
as the brilliant debut album track Dead As A Ghost with its haunting trumpeting twisted around a rattling drumbeat.
There's always been a dark underbelly to the group's twisted melodic rock tunes such as the melancholic
Sleep Like The Witch That You Are, which sparkles and shines tonight like a precious jewel.
Joby Mullens, The Fly
Filling the venue with tendrils of menace and despair,
the dynamics that fill their `Heart of Stone’ album have never sounded more perfectly replicated.
Add my name to the list of those predicting great things.
Sam Shepherd - Nightshift (May 2008)
Witches have cherry-picked a richly varied plethora of influences and the resultant music is, quite frankly,
astounding. Their ability to meld dark with light has rarely been done
better and they have a strange power to totally and utterly rock, without
ever sounding the least bit angry. Really, could there be a better local
band right now? Somehow we doubt it.
Nightshift (Oct 2007)
There's some kind of stubborn genius at work here that Witches frontman Dave Griffiths can take a vibe so coolly
British, redolent of The Good, The Bad and the Queen, and persist in dicing in the latin-flavoured trumpet that alternately blusters and croons through a majority of
the songs. The whole is a creative and satisfying beast that jostles to ask you searching questions and be noticed.
Paul Carrera - Nightshift (May 2007)
It's a mark of good songwriting that their tunes are deceptively simple and eminently
catchy, despite being so densely structured and rich.
Nightshift (June 2006)
Intricate, layered arrangements, which allow xylophone,
keyboard, bass, drums, vocals and each of the three guitars to rise and dip, and shine in all the right places.
oxfordbands.com
