Wash the Sins Not Only the Face is the second studio album by British rock band Esben and the Witch released on 21 January 2013. A deluxe version of the album was also released, which features the LP and CD version of the album and a bonus 7". The lyrics seem to be a semi-concept album as it is meant to be a journey with each song representing different parts of that journey.
The album was first announced in October along with promotional single "Deathwaltz", which was released because they felt this was a good bridge between their first album to their second. The album was received well by critics, NME said "Call it highbrow, call it highfalutin, but with Wash The Sins…, Esben are carving hulking tablets of stone boasting that intellect is nothing to be scared of. No amount of splashing can scrub that out" giving it 7/10, and Clash said "...everything about this album is bigger than what has gone before and reveals an energised band with a real belief in what they’re doing. Quite right too".
Background
In 2010, Esben and the Witch signed to Matador Records and released their second single "Marching Song" in October, which charted at number 50 in the Billboard Hot Singles Sales. The same month "Warpath" was released as a single. On 31 January they released Violet Cries shortly after the band's shortlisting in the BBC's Sound of 2011 poll.
The album was well critically acclaimed and went at number 13 in the UK Indie Chart, AllMusic awarded it three and a half stars out of five, calling it "a promising and often captivating debut". NME said it was "gothic but not goth" giving it 8/10. On Record Store Day 2011, they released the "Chorea" single on 12" vinyl. In 2012, the band began to work on their next record.
Writing and recording
In 2012 the band began work on writing new material. Unlike their debut album, Violet Cries (2011), the lyrics were written solely by Davies. The writing for the album was done while they were isolated at White Magpie and Ariel cottage in East Sussex, where they lived, in peace, for a few months. Upon completion they went to 4AD Studios in London to record them. The songs were first recorded live in the studio. Davies said that they wanted the album to have a "warmer" sound so they co-produced the album with Tom Morris, saying that "It was great to have someone else in the process, actually, which is something which – again – we hadn’t done". During the recording process, "Deathwaltz" had originally had a waltz-like guitar tune. which was completely removed while keeping the name. "Despair" they felt was to "scrappy" that it could never fit on the album, but they like it so much they made it into what it is now.
Lyrics and themes
The band said that they wanted the album to be a journey and each song is a different part of the journey. The album's title was inspired by an ancient Greek palindrome they found while touring Violet Cries. The album's opening song, "Iceland Spar", starts the journey by the sun rising at the beginning of the day. The title refers to a type of calcite named Iceland Spar. This was used by the Vikings for navigational purposes, known as the Viking Sunstone. The second track, "Slow Wave", is about dreams and your dream self. They appear to use the silver cord to represent the physical body connecting with the mental body of, in this case, the emotions in dreams.
The third song, "When That Head Splits", was inspired by the Salvador Dalí poem and painting Metamorphosis of Narcissus and the story of Narcissus saying that he was an exceptionally proud man, in that he disdained those who loved him. Nemesis saw this and attracted Narcissus to a pool where he saw his own reflection in the water and fell in love with it. Unable to embrace the watery image, he pined away, and the gods immortalized him as a Narcissus. The title of the song is a direct line from the poem, they wanted to use words from the poem to put in the song but, due to legal issues, they decided against it. The next track, "Shimmering", is supposed to be set in the full heat of the day. The title refers to the haze on the horizon and the lyrics talk about mirages and optical illusions caused by the sun. It was inspired by Camus' novel The Outsider, saying they wanted to, musically, recreate the "wooziness" of it.