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Frankie and The Witch Fingers, Oslo, Hackney, East London, June 2023 – Mid summer night in a Hackney sauna with gawd knows how many people jumping around as Dylan Sizemore and most of the audience together shout “Well come on!” . By the time Frankie and The Witch Fingers rip the audience a collective new one with a superbly raw crowd pleasing shout-along final encore take on The Stooges I Wanna Be Your Dog they’ve already won. Yes it is hard to fail with all that and I know a million bands have done it already but hey, Now we’re gonna be face-to-face and everyone is jumping and shouting along and the Witch Fingers had already convincingly won the night by a mile by then, and Dog really was just one of those moments, the icing on a very very hot cake or the burning sands or something like that, the reason we all go to gigs. An excellent ending to a proper gig, shit eating grins and sweat soaked bodies everywhere, knowing glances, those in the know caught something rather good tonight…
There was a buzz on this one from the off, something in the air. Summer Solstice evening in the hot hot (stupidly hot) city. No time for a pit stop half way up Mare Street, we’re running late, Helgi’s and that cold pint of Roadcrew in the bar with the windows blacked out by the painting of the first Black Sabbath album will have to wait until after the show. Do love a bar where you can sink a pint while obscure bits of Budgie provide the soundtrack and Annihilator’s Alice in Hell might come on at any give moment (do love that it happens to be the nearest bar to the Organ bunker here in East London), not tonight though, Helgi’s can wait until after The Witch Fingers have done their thing. The top end of Mare Street is the destination tonight (I like that we don’t have to leave our street to partake in all this) Frankie And The Witch Fingers are at Oslo, up by Hackney Central. Managed to miss the support band, Japanese Television and their slant on space surf, sorry about that, I hate missing support bands, height of rudeness and what we’ve heard of them sounds rather good, really wanted to see them.wasn’t expecting then to e on so damn early…
The Start is low key, no bulshit here, The Witch Fingers have no time to mess around, they finish a quick line check, head back stage and minutes later they’re up again, the four of them, awkward looking band, none of them look like rock stars, none of them look like they want to be rock stars! They’re here, there’s serious business to be done, riffs to be played, people to be rocked, they’re here to get on with it – “We’re Frankie And The Witch Fingers from LA, thanks for coming to check us out” and with very little ceremony off we go.
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The venue is hot before the band add to the brew, one of the hottest nights of the year so far, perfect night for some wired garage flavoured punked up locked on proper psych rock. And it is a brew, there’s a lot in here, a whole host of flavour that ultimately adds up to something slightly different. A whole bag of tasty ingredients, whole lumps of Pink Fairies, healthy bits of the new wave side of late 70’s Hawkwind (Pinkwind anyone?), early Motorhead (which of course was a kind of Hawkwind/Pink Fairies Larry Wallis/Lemmy flavoured thing anyway) all flowing around a sometimes regimented sometimes very punky riff-heavy garage-driven Stooges/MC5 tinged primordial groove that they claim comes “Bubbling up from the psychedelic tar pits of L.A.”. There’s some very big riffs here, a chemistry flowing between the four of them, the groove is right, righteous, is there some Primal Scream in there with their slightly proggy synths and angular guitar harmonies? Whatever it is they’re not hanging around, the Witch Fingers really are a band in a hurry, they don’t take long to get things moving, the walls are dripping, it might not be completely packed in here, there’s a more than healthy turn out though, everything feels full, the place is jumping, the band are feeding off it all, they’re reacting, they’re heavier, punked up, not as laid back as they can be, they’re tuned in, there’s more bite than we’ve previously heard from them, Proper is the word…
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Frankie and The Witch Fingers are touring Europe ahead of their rather fine new album Data Doom, the new album isn’t as heavy as they are live, not that that’s a bad thing, I like their different shades of intensity, and this performance tonight is drenched in attitude, adrenaline, in pure garage rock and roll goodness. The Witch Fingers look like they’re having fun, enjoying being in front of their own audience, apparently they’ve been doing a lot of touring as an opening act, apparently they feel good about people coming out just to see them, you almost sense their relief in terms of there being an audience in the building. They had nothing to worry about, the place is bouncing, the Oslo floor is moving, wonder what it sounds like down on the ground floor in the bar? Are they expect us all to come crashing through at any moment? Is it extra loud in here? This feels good, proper, proper rock, proper no messing garage punk rock show, four people wired in, locked on and hitting the spot again and again. proper really is the word here, The Witch Fingers properly rocked the place, that encore mailed it, there’s big smiles everywhere as we head for the door and some much needed air. proper. (sw)
More – Website / Bandcamp / There might well be a bit of bootleg footage on the Organ Instagram feed
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THE ORGAN 
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