As if the title of The Wytches’ upcoming debut album, Annabel Dream Reader, didn’t already evoke Edgar Allan Poe, the band’s music seems to inhabit the same haunted shadows. The young British trio recorded Annabel at Toe Rag Studios, the room where The White Stripes famously capture Elephant, and there’s a sliver of The Stripes’ tuneful garage rock to The Wytches’ sound. But as heard on “Crying Clown”—debuted here, along with a video of leader Kristian Bell performing the song live and acoustic—there’s a brooding, gothic aura to the group that wouldn’t be out of place on the soundtrack of an adaption of Poe’s “Annabel Lee.”
Annabel Dream Reader will be released August 26 via Partisan Records.
The Wytches tour 2014
July 15—Knickerbockers—Lincoln, Nebraska
July 16—Grenada Theatre—Lawrence, Kansas
July 17—The Luminary—St. Louis, Missouri
July 18—Schubas—Chicago, Illinois
July 21—Underground At The Drake—Toronto, Ontario
July 23—Great Scott—Allston, Massachusetts
July 24—Mercury Lounge—New York, New York
July 25—Glasslands—New York, New York
July 26—Boot & Saddle—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania