When listening to Bambara it is always striking how many people neglect the real basis for their songs: Bambara is a storytelling band. The music comes second and thus one should look at the lyrics much more. So let’s do this with some of the lyrics of their upcoming record Birthmarks!
Upon the several ways of looking at literature or adjacent text types there are two that seem strikingly adequate for Birthmarks: The autobiographical approach and the one that only deals with the text itself. Let’s start with some of the autobiographical elements: The whole record seems like a Southern Gothic story straight out of the books of pens of Flannery O’Conner, William Faulkner or James Dickey or Ace Atkins, Attica Locke or Karin Slaughter, if you prefer some younger authors (I can only highly recommend this text by Norris Eppes in the Bitter Southerner if you want to know more about Rural Noir Southern Crime Fiction). That is surely no coincidence as the trio founded the band when they were still in Junior High in Atlanta before they moved out to R.E.M. -town (aka Athens, Georgia) only to then move to New York City where they have now been residing for several years already. Thus one might say that there music is still a Southern one and even though vocalist Reid Bateh has no Country and Tumbleweed accent, there is a certain laid-back-ness in his vocals that sometimes contradicts his current home. One can sometimes feel the sweat on his vocal chords when he delivers the story of Elena and our narrator. However, one can also notice the influence of their new Big Apple surrounds when listening carefully to some of the tracks, for example the opener ”Hiss” you might notice some intonations and vocal paces that are very blue-collar reminding one of the Boss, especially the way that Reid uses the word “valley”. Thus it should be established that Birthmarks, the band’s sixth full-length, has vocals from both regions. Musically though, the record is a bit more Big Apple than rural Georgia which is also in itself due to the fact that many tracks are steeped in Post-Punk, but then again, there is a lot of hall, which results in some of the tracks having a vibe as if recorded in a huge abandoned cathedral somewhere out in a forlorn town in Northwestern Georgia; a good example would be the hall and echo on some of the synth passages on ”Face of Love”, which could also be a duet between Townes van Zandt and Siouxsie; however here it’s a collaboration with Madeline Johnston (aka Midwife) which makes it even better – and let’s me hope for a shared performance on the Roadburn stage this year! Generally the collaborations on this record show that the trio has surely expanded their soundscape by including a harp, trumpet, vibraphone, alto sax, strings and more into their sound – this way ensuring that the sounds are paired well with the story.
Now, let’s have a look at the story itself – it is not one of the easier ones, how should it be in the context of this genre, anyway?! The narrator is a one-eyed man who already in the second song begs a judge to sentence him to death after having the husband one of his love interest, Elena. Here we already have most of the story in a nutshell – man driven into madness by loving the woman he can’t have, so he tries to pave the way to her heart by killing her man. The images Reid uses to describe the longed-for death sentence are delivered in such a poppy way that one might not get how cruel they are: ”Plug me in and hit the switch. Strike me with lighting. I’ll wear my dancing boots of polished python skin and kick till she’s smiling. If killing’s what I did, killed’s what I should get. […] I want to hear you laugh like a little kid through the crackling wires. It’ll sting a bit when the show begins and my blood’s ignited.”. And not only the imagery are spot-on in his vocals but they also have a high stylistic value, for example the use of assonance to make the lines float even better. Just listen to ”Face of Love” and lines like: ”Like a snake that bites after death, some faces are ageless, in stasis”. Or remember how important is it to notice intertextuality and references to other texts – well, take Pray to Me” and its references to Waylon Jennings (another of these outlaw country idols) and his track ”“Lonesome, On’ry, and Mean” where one of these lost souls meets a woman, falls for her and is lost forever, with no fulfillment for his wishes and desires. The narrator in Jennings’ track also begs to be done right, just like our narrator in Birthmarks - and both also share the desire for a woman that seemingly will never completely respond to the affections and attention given to them. That some of the tracks are musically different is obvious but to get a track like ”Elena’s Dream” bordering on Doomjazz with the Alto Saxophone, Trumpet and Vibraphone opening the track while Madeline Johnston is back telling Elena’s story: Haunting. Lonesome. Lovable. Heavenly. The way that the next track, ”Because You Asked” keeps the same soundscape but our narrator telling the story shows that this record is not a collection of tracks but a continuous story from multiple perspectives.
This record is a miraculous step for Bambara, it highlights Reid as a storyteller, opens the music for more variable influences and directions. Birthmarks is surely a record to reckon with and surely not one to object to; though in parts obscene it never becomes rabid. Enjoy these ten tracks and do not forget to read the lyrics for they (as well as the atmospheric music) are magnificent!
