Soraia Turn Up the Menace on The Sonics' "The Witch"
By Chris Vaglio
Some songs were built to be played too loud. When The Sonics put out "The Witch" as their debut single in 1964, the Tacoma band's snarling riff and Gerry Roslie's unhinged howl were more than a lot of radio programmers wanted to deal with. Six decades later, it sits in the foundation of garage rock, and every band that picks it up faces the same problem: how do you make it your own without sanding off the danger?
Philadelphia's Soraia have had plenty of time to work that out. They have been covering The Sonics on stage since 2011, first with "Have Love Will Travel" and later with "The Witch," and it was the audiences who talked them into putting it on tape. "Every time we play it, that initial scream kicks both the band's and the audience's adrenaline into high gear like nothing I've seen," says frontwoman ZouZou Mansour, who calls this recording their "more horroresque version."
As a lifelong Sonics fan, I can say it: they got it right. Soraia not only do the song justice, they make it meaner. The fuzzed-out guitars bite harder than the original, and the whole thing carries more menace and ferocity without ever tipping over into heavy metal. It still sounds like garage rock. It just sounds like garage rock with its teeth out.
Mansour is the reason it works. Her voice has a lived-in quality, bluesy, raspy and venomous, but with real soul underneath. It brings back the best hallmarks of The Detroit Cobras, another band that knew how to take an old song and make it sweat. There's a built-in twist, too. The original is a guy warning his buddies about the dangerous new girl in town. With Mansour at the mic, the warning sounds a lot more like a threat.
The October timing is no accident, but don't file this under seasonal novelty. It's loud, it's raw, and it rocks. Any film or TV music supervisor hunting for their next great needle drop should have this version at the top of the list.
UPCOMING SHOWS
October 8 — Cafe Nine — New Haven, CT
October 9 — Bowery Palace — New York, NY
October 10 — Midway Cafe — Boston, MA
October 11 — The Parlour — Providence, RI
October 22 — The High Water Mark — Portland, OR
October 23 — The Fireside Lounge — Alameda, CA
October 24 — Rock n’ Roll Flea Market — Alameda, CA