Witch Gardens is the project of four kids in Seattle who are eschewing that region's tendency towards buzz and psych-garage and pulling the twee card out of the deck. With tightly strung guitars and autoharp and bright multi-part harmonies on quickly-spoken lyrical exchanges, Witch Gardens remind me a lot of a band I miss dearly, Best Friends Forever. There are differences, however; BFF never integrated all the different instruments you hear on this 7-inch, R-I-P, and the subjects of the lyrics are slightly more obscured, where BFF always took a very non-metaphorical route – that song about having sex with a ghost was about having sex with a ghost. The A-side of the 7-inch is a really lovely little pop number called “Aunt Shea/Mean Colleen”. It is two songs in one, but even though there is a curtain of bells and autoharp in the middle, the sections are strung together next to each other. I love the sing-song chorus melody of the “Aunt Shea” section: I go weak in the knees for this specific type of hyper-literate cuteness. The 7-inch is coming out on Mississippi Records Waterwing Records imprint and it's available now, or you can get the whole thing as a download below or on their Bandcamp.
