Indie rock duo Witch Post have returned with a brand new EP, Butterfly, fluttering fresh off the press and releasing next Friday. The geographically unlikely musical duo came into being in the aftermath of a few perfectly weird, absolutely coincidental happenings. Alaska Reid from the US and Dylan Fraser who’s from Scotland – who originally ran solo – soon found that they were brought up in two different towns in two completely different countries that shared the same name; Reid in Livingston, Montana, and Fraser in the Livingston that neighbours Edinburgh. Their meeting of minds and artistry could easily be considered fate, stemming back from years ago when Fraser discovered the sonic poetry of Reid’s 2020 EP, Big Bunny and covered one of the tracks for an Instagram video. Catching Reid’s attention, the two set up a writing session and ended up crossing paths at a Charli XCX gig, just the night before said meetup.
The pair channel their most whimsy-grungy, dream-like, trance-inducing, spellbound sound yet in this their second EP. One of the featured singles, Twin Fawn was inspired by the duo’s very union, in fact. It is described as a love letter to the bandmates’ differing experiences on the West Coast – “as Witch Post, our memories become as fantastical and intertwined as twin fawns,” co-artist Alaska Reid says. Sweetly melancholic drum patterns unfold under angelic vocals streaming from the songbirds’ mouths, similarly in track Worry Angel, Fraser sings, “I’m not a believer until it suits me,” atop harmonising vocals led by Reid. Folkloric in vibe and whimsically grungy in sound, the EP promises soft pining vocals buried amongst grittily distorted guitar riffs.
The two-piece’s debut EP Beast was released early last year, situating the duo within the multilayered genre of atmospheric rock. Within a matter of months, they were signed to Partisan Records which already houses the likes of Geese, Blondshell and PJ Harvey.
The whole dialogue for Butterfly is conjured up from phrases woven from strange and spooky tales. Dualities are played on (take their chosen EP titles Beast and Butterfly for example) and their sonic storytelling becomes a whole tale dipped in surrealism. After all, we do not always see things as they are. Leaning further into narration, Reid (ever the wordsmith) penned a short story to accompany the EP. The tale, centred on an unnerving antagonist dubbed MoonTooth, was inspired by the setting in which Butterfly was conceived, as Reid escapes the boundaries of traditional media-focused coverage.
Here, we chat with Witch Post to discover more about their process for Butterfly, their love for storytelling and fables and their pre-show rituals.
1. Describe your band identity in three words.
Dylan: Ragged, spontaneous, magical.
2. Your new EP is called Butterfly, can you tell us a bit about what led you to that title?
Alaska: We wanted to mirror the contrast between our two EPs, not only in sound but also thematically. I’ve found it’s easier to be moody and punky, so in many ways the darker themes around Beast made for a good first body of work. Meanwhile with Butterfly we tried to open things up a bit more and write with a more nuanced, more defined perspective. There’s an inherent “springiness” in Butterfly we wanted to lean into. Even though a lot of the songs off of the Butterfly were written in tandem with the Beast songs they found each other. For example, we wrote Changeling alongside The Wolf but felt that Changeling paired more with something like Tilt-A-Whirl. I also think beasts and butterflies are interesting because they both imply something magical and something everyday. A beast can be a cow or a minotaur, the wings of a butterfly can sprout from a fairy’s back etc… Sonically we like to have extreme dynamics, so it all meshed together when we were looking at this mess of songs and wondering “how do we deliver, tackle and package this?”
3. Why have you decided to present the bio for the EP as a short story as opposed to a traditional press release?
Alaska: I’ve written a lot of my press releases/statements in the past and for the most part they’re all boring. Everyone grinds, comes from other scenes, plays shows, whatever. Describing how something sounds can also be painful to read when you’re a musician, so I decided that I’d much prefer to understand the spirit of it from another angle. Don’t you want to hear what we dream about, or what we want you to see in your head when we’re writing a song? I try to write something that I’d enjoy if I stumbled across it online, something that doesn’t feel desperate and impersonal in the noise of the internet.
4. After reading your short story, I’m intrigued to find out more about your unsettling antagonist Moon Tooth (I need to know if he’s a devout vegan, if he shops at Wholefoods and if he believes in sun cream)
Alaska: He’s probably frying up lizards or snakes for dinner at 8pm and listening to Warren Zevon demos. Oh, and one hundred percent no sunscreen.
5. What are five things you wouldn’t find in Witch Post’s bags and why?
Alaska: Perfume, autotune, vapes, anything that involves running backing tracks (we’re allergic to them), energy drinks.
*an exception would be Dylan’s cologne that I somehow have never smelled but he apparently always wears and checks a bag for.
6. Can you paint us a picture of what your process was like for creating Butterfly?
Dylan: It was a very chaotic time. Chaotic in the good sense. Butterfly was written alongside Beast so it’s some of our first work as a band. I think what’s nice about Butterfly is that it was spontaneous. There wasn’t a base in which we recorded these songs. We were completely independent and using friend’s studios and shitty setups in our houses, trying to make space for it anywhere we could. I think it’s been good for us as a band to work in this way for the first two EPs because I feel like it let us be free and not too precious overall which allowed us to experiment with a range of different sonics.
Alaska: We did the finishing bits of it last January in Montana. It was very cold and icy. We lit a lot of beeswax candles and fought over drum sounds.
7. Can you tell us about a time when you clashed deciphering what material you wanted to use for an individual project, versus the music you make together?
Dylan: Actually, we clashed on a song when we were writing Butterfly haha. I brought in this idea I’d been working on and I really felt emotionally connected to it. I love it as a song, but it really didn’t make sense for it to be a Witch Post song. Sometimes it’s hard to remove yourself and realise when it’s not the right thing. It’s something we’ve spoken about in depth when it comes to our band – ‘What makes it different from our solo stuff?’ – and it’s a question we both have to constantly remind ourselves of. It’s a question that leads to the best Witch Post songs.
8. Refer to all five senses in the ideal scenario for your listeners to hear your new album in.
Alaska: You’d probably be in the backseat of the car with us on the way to finding our band talisman. We’d roll down the windows and the sky would be half golden light and the other half would be a roiling gray storm. We’d all smell the pines and as well as impending rain. Dylan would probably get some fast food on the way and we would steal some of his french fries (or chips). I’d have packed weird things like a strange looking paper bag full of walnuts and I’d probably have a pear. We’d share all of this, too. Before the storm officially starts we’d find a creek and we’d dunk but only for a few seconds because the water would be cold as hell as if it melted off of a glacier. With our skin tingling we’d search the creek and find a butterfly wing in the dirt. Before we get to our location we’d all listen to the record as the rain starts to sluice the windshield. When the lightning lights up the nearby hill, we’d put the car in drive and continue on our way.
9. Do you have any rituals before live performances?
Dylan: I try to be good and do the honey lemon ginger thing but sometimes I’m just so fucking nervous that I have to down a glass of wine before to loosen up.
Alaska: I restring my guitars and unfortunately always have something with a lot of milk in it.
10. What’s one moment from a live performance you’d wait to share with your future grandkids until they were grown up?
Dylan: I wouldn’t even call this a live performance in the literal sense of the phrase but it came to mind because it always stays with me, this one: Sinéad O’Connor at Bob Dylan’s The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration. It’s so powerful, I get emotional every time I watch it. I think Sinéad is one of the best to ever do it.
Photography by Parker Love Bowling.
