The Spells
The Night Has Eyes
Garganta Press
The Spells were never afraid of the dark. Alive for three years, having infiltrated New York City’s so-called “Moth” scene, the all-female trio dressed its vamping, garage-rock fervor all in black to match its goth influences. What started out in Austin, Texas, in 1995 as an outgrowth of something called The Read Scare came to an end in Gotham’s underground in 1998. They left behind an orphan that’s stayed in the house, a haunted one at that, all this time.
All grown up, The Night Has Eyes — previously unreleased and produced by Greg Talenfeld, known for his work with The Walkmen and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, as well as Pavement — is now seeing the light of day, making its long-delayed vinyl debut in deluxe edition finery. It doesn’t like the sun, as Nicole Barrick (vocals and guitar), Marisa Pool (vocals/bass), and Leni Zumas (drums) whip up an oily, vampiric racket, stomping their way through “Vanishing Act,” shadowed and shaken by the unsettling noir-horror of a stringy “Strange,” and slinking around a staggered title track with witchy organ, off-kilter surf guitar, and grumbling bass. Think Southern Culture on the Skids doing covers of The Misfits.
Or maybe The Spells are the doomed ancestors of more modern acts like L.A. Witch or Death Valley Girls, with Zumas’ tightly hammered beats driving everything like Janet Weiss in the early days of Sleater-Kinney. Rather than riot, though, The Spells prefer to creep across an eerie “Isadora” and a rich and resonant “Yumiko,” blending spoken word and misanthropic singing to chilling effect, like a black widow in cinematic slow burns, whereas the slashing hysterics of “Snow White’s Coffin” scream homicidal madness.
The story of The Spells is told with sharp wit, blunt honesty, and feverish passion in an accompanying essay by CREEM’s Zachary Lipiz, embedded with photos taken by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs’ Nick Zinner, that also perfectly captures the zeitgeist of that era. Not as arty as some of their NYC post-punk rivals, like Jonathan Fire*Eater or the aforementioned Walkmen, The Spells were a spooky alternative and just as cool, if not more so.
Campiness is in the eye of the beholder, but they never seemed to go in for that sort of silliness, although the fact that the record is out on Halloween seems appropriate. A crackerjack band that played with evil power and restraint, careful to set the right mood and deftly juggle interesting dynamics and textures, The Spells were a whole lot of fun. If only they had more poisoned musical candy to give out.
