L.A. Witch

The L.A. Witch have always exuded an aura of casual sophistication, whether manifested as the essential, laconic rock’n’roll of their eponymous debut album or the adventurous, searing austerity of their second record “Play With Fire.” The band-composed of Sade Sanchez (guitar/vocals), Irita Pai (bass) and Ellie English (drums)-began as an informal project, but the sensual and bewitching songs wrapped in reverb struck a chord with audiences, taking the project beyond the narrow circuit of friends and colleagues in Southern California to a wider audience.

On their new album, “DOGGOD,” the trio pushes their creative work beyond previous boundaries, both in terms of artistry and geography, choosing to compose the record in Paris and record the tracks at Motorbass Studio on the Rue des Martyrs. “DOGGOD” explores broader sonic territories, employs a richer arsenal of timbres and addresses broader existential and cosmic themes, while retaining the band’s distinctive trait: a sense of the forbidden, forlorn and unsettling.

“DOGGOD” is a way to address the universal enigma woven into the spiritual nature of love and devotion.

“I feel like a kind of servant or love slave,” Sanchez says. “There is a willingness to die for love, in the process of serving it, suffering from it, or seeking it-just as a faithful and devoted dog would.”

The title of the album is a palindrome that fuses together the words DOG (dog) and GOD (God)-an exaltation of submission and a subversion of the divine. It is a tribute to the purity of dogs and a recognition of their unconditional love and protective nature, in contrast to the derogatory meanings often associated with this species.

“There is a symbolic link between women and dogs that expresses the subordinate position of women in society,” Sanchez further explains. “And whatever embodies divine characteristics has never deserved to be used as an insult.” These contradictory explorations between love and submission are manifested in the fusion of the band’s typical garage alchemy with a new post-punk-scented graft.

In the end, “DOGGOD” perfectly represents the L.A. Witch approach. It is at once romantic and ominous, reverent and profane, a celebration and a lament. Find the thread that connects past and present, reworking familiar sounds for the modern era. But it also marks the beginning of a new phase for the band, which looks beyond Kodachrome memories of mid-century America to delve deeper into the medieval and Gothic energies of Paris and beyond, while also probing the interiority of a tainted heart.