In Hatter’s Mad Emporium, BOG WITCH constructs lines like stepping into a distorted fairytale, with unsettling specifics and turned-about images. Language revolves around the subject of illusion and anarchy, charting a world frozen in time when rules warp and sense breaks away. By refusing the idea that time stands still at six o’clock, BOG WITCH proposes a space where conventional hours hold no sway, as if the clocks themselves gave up trying to create order.

The dark and tongue-in-cheek allusions, like the beaver creamatorium and the raven sanitorium, are an unhinging sort of charm. They make the ordinary both whimsical and disturbing turns of phrase, leaving the listener guessing about what’s coming next. BOG WITCH doesn’t so much create a scene as they build an atmosphere that’s full of bizarre textures like felt hats and blacked-out auditoriums. The atmosphere of the song is Victorian in sensibilities, but twisted into something else, something where nothing ever fits and anything might become something else when you’re not paying attention.

The repetition of “it says eat me” reinforces the message of change and temptation. BOG WITCH shows us how easy it is to be tempted into undefined peril, fueled by curiosity. The use of the words “curioser and curiouser” and “furiouser and furiouser” adds to the feeling of curiosity turning into danger, and curiosity becoming savage and out of hand. As far as BOG WITCH is saying, change most oftentimes comes with a cost, even if it starts with something seemingly benign.

The lyrics also swing from apparent nonsense frivolity to hidden significance, in a manner that people are never really certain what is and isn’t there. Merging politeness words like decorum with bizarre places like the beaver creamatorium, BOG WITCH demonstrates the coexistence of order and chaos. Even the tea party, that one moment of peace, is wrapped in felt and shadows, in a manner that it feels like another portion of the illusion.

Throughout Hatter’s Mad Emporium, BOG WITCH uses repetition to pull us deeper into this bizarre, frozen world. The repetition of “torium, torium, torium” is almost a chant, and the song itself is spell-like. The words are less describing something than evoking a mood that’s as haunting as it is playful. In the end, BOG WITCH takes mundane words and strange images and makes them nothing short of enchanting, teaching us how to find the beautiful in the midst of chaos and how to achieve transformation in the most unexpected of places.