Publish Date: 18-May-2006

Stoner rock is hard to screw up unless you play through a solid-state practice amp, hold your bass up over your nipples like an idiot, or buy your weed from that guy who stands outside Charlie?s CD shop on Granville. And yet legions of well-meaning dirtbags manage to screw it up anyway, year after year. Witch?praise be?is a dazzling argument in favour of rock staying stoned, largely because it keeps leaping out of the genre?s molten grooves and into points beyond. ?Black Saint? makes a fuck-you beeline for power metal in its second half, with some particularly impolite work from drummer J Mascis (yes?that J Mascis). ?Isadora? begins with a section that works as a solemn if retarded attempt to conjure up Middle Earth?complete with a couple of fantastical guitar runs?but it also works just as well as a joke. Either way, the bastard rocks by the end of its six minutes, and Witch walks that line beautifully.

The future Laserarium staple ?Rip Van Winkle? is full of deliriously stupid lyrics like ?Upon a hill, he went to sleep? and schizoid mood swings that make it and the rest of this protean album almost as thrilling as Comets on Fire?s genre-defining Blue Cathedral. Both reject the monomania that drags down typical stoner-rock releases, while the overall cheeriness and the oddly peppy vocals of Kyle Thomas (of freak folkies Feather) makes Witch less basement-black-light than pit-party-Pilsner-sunset.