A year after achieving critical acclaim with their album Octoberland, The Armoires are back with a Halloween-themed single that finds the band in “Full-On Witch Mode.”
The song is the lead single off Big Stir Records’ brand new Halloween compilation Chilling, Thrilling Hooks and Haunted Harmonies, coming out tomorrow.
“In planning the video for ‘Full-On Witch Mode,’ we wanted to embody the spirit of the song, which is in a way the core spirit of The Armoires and our sound — warm and welcoming but a little bit eerie and unsettling at the same time,” the group said in a collective statement. “Band leaders Christina Bulbenko and Rex Broome were both part of the main team assembling the whole Big Stir Records Halloween album Chilling, Thrilling Hooks and Haunted Harmonies for which the song was recorded, and the vibe there was a throwback to the benign scares of the late ’60s and early ’70s — think Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion and the creepy ‘scare yourself at home’ LPs for kids in that era. The song is a bit more serious than that, so we struck a middle ground. The studio footage of the band comes across as a slightly haunted version of a vintage variety show performance, and the cutaway footage of the faces and instruments were loosely inspired by Madame Leota’s seance room. Together, they present a sort of timeless aesthetic that we believe is perfectly suited to the track. The cinematography is by Michael Bulbenko and the ghostly effects were crafted by Michael Simmons (who also produced the track and co-produced the full Chilling, Thrilling collection with Rex and Christina). Miranda Broome sits in as the substitute bassist for this video, meaning that both sides of the stage are occupied by parent-child teams: Broomes on the right, and Bulbenkos (Christina and her daughter Larysa, full-time violist in the band) on the left. That’s a vintage Omnichord that Christina’s playing, making for an almost certainly completely unique combination of instruments on display… just quirky enough to add a little mystique to this Halloween outing for The Armoires.”
For the band, which also includes bassist Clifford Ulrich and drummer John M. Borack, they feel strongly that the single — with its Fleetwood Mac meets The Slits vibe — stands tall on its own as much as it gels with the whole ensemble of acts included on the double LP. From: https://rockandrollglobe.com/rock/the-armoires-go-full-on-witch-mode/
