Music

NICE: Ascension of the witches

by Aaron Brophy

In our annual festive Naughty and Nice feature, AUX compiles the best and worst of the year in music.

Remember Emily Strange?

Well, Emily and her black cat have clearly left an impression on the young women of today, because not since the Salem witch trials of the 1690s have there been so many sorceresses practicing their dark musical arts.

It’s not like they’re being particularly subtle about it either. British band Esben And The Witch actually have the word “witch” in their name. Californian Chelsea Wolfe named her album Ἀποκάλυψις, Greek for “Apokalypsis,” and when The Black Belles and Dum Dum Girls end up in the same place at the same time it’s going to make the fight between Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin Crowe at the end of Carnivale (spoiler alert) seem like Sunday school prayer in comparison.

And those acts are just the tip of the broomstick. There’s Tasseomancy, the twin sisters who’ve named themselves after the act of reading tea leaves to tell one’s fortune, which makes them perfect underwater tea party companions for Warpaint.

Then there are the breakout acts. Austra are kind of playing with the form a little bit, but lead singer Katie Stelmanis did do this video in her pre-Austra solo career. You can try to pass off Lykke Li’s quirks to Nordic moodiness, but the “Get Some” video proves at the very least she’s got some serious sex voodoo going on.

And that doesn’t even take into account fringe necromancers like Florence And The Machine, Anna Calvi, Cat’s Eyes or Creep. Or still-vital Grand Sorceresses like Bjork, PJ Harvey, Kate Bush or Portishead.

Whether the confluence of these mystic-seeming female artists is a manifestation of the dark times we live in, a slight return to the earth mother-ism before institutional religions, a certain form of empowerment, or just some big coincidence, one thing’s for sure, 2011 was the season of the witch, and their spells sounded really good.

Return to the Naughty and Nice master list.