A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Bambara’s Birthmarks LP. Frances Bacon may have famously claimed that, “In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present,” but he couldn’t possibly have accounted for the darkness sounding as fine as it does on Birthmarks, Bambara’s fifth studio album. Bands like The Dirty Three might ring bells in comparable quality, but they are all similar only in perfectly abstract terms and prove it as, for the thirty-three minutes that it takes to run front-to-back with the album, listeners will get acquainted with the notion that not all things are easy to quantify as just “light” or “dark.”
The sense of confusion outlined above becomes perfectly self-evident right away as needle catches groove and an ominous drone opens “Hiss,” but that color immediately begins to change after Reid Bateh steps to the mic and offers a melody that is simultaneously cathartic and dimly intoned. Listeners may find themselves frozen in place as the song unfolds and they try to figure out if they should feel uplifted or terrified by the creeping bass line and Bateh’s deep, haunting vocals. Listeners may feel the hairs on their collective necks begin to rise, and the spell only gets broken by Emma Acs’ warmer and more welcoming vocal contribution to the song’s second verse. Even with that change in play though, listeners will still be unnerved by what they’ve experienced when the song finally draws to a close at the four-minute, sixteen-second mark.
After “Hiss” has left listeners off-balance, the going gets a little more gothic after Bateh clears his throat and launches “Letters From Sing Sing” into motion. There, Bateh swears to listeners that there is no violence in his heart – but a great and fantastically propulsive bass line instantly calls that claim into question. Listeners will find themselves won easily as a horn section enters the mix and adds a manic color to it too – and they’ll be left just spinning by song’s end; it is truly just spectacular.
As the side progresses, Bambara lightens ever so slightly and touches upon some spoken word ground as well as some trip hop flavoring similar to that which Poe did on her Haunted albumwhen the band looks at “Face Of Love” with some help from Midwife, and then dives deep into gothic rock with a hint of Smashing Pumpkins (circa Adore) showing too in “Pray To Me,” where the band remains through “Holy Bones” before finally beginning to see some light (and relief) right before the side closes and needle lifts following the play of “Elena’s Dream.” There, amid atonal-sounding horns and surprisingly pretty chimes, listeners will find their nerves being gently soothed as Madeline Johnston tells the story of discovering a snake’s nest in the woods, her friend being bitten and meeting her end. Somehow, the sound is incredibly sublime even if it is short and that brevity will have listeners rushing to their turntables to flip the record over to discover what more they may find. Granted, given the fairly insular nature of their experience through the album’s A-side, listeners might not understand what the rush could possibly be, but they also can’t deny it.
…And, on the B-side, they find more of the surprisingly affecting serum that hooked listeners on the A-. In “Because You Asked,” Bateh returns with some more lyrical anguish, but Bria Salmena adds some warmer and more hopeful backup vocals too – which keeps the song from sinking completely in its sadness. “Dive Shrine” follows with more frenetic tempos that both the song and the band wear better than the more moribund sounds that have defined the album to that point but, again, that highlight is short-lived as “Smoke” sinks back into slower tempos and insular sentiments. That turn back into misery would be understandable enough – given the overall nature of the album as a whole but, seemingly just to confuse matters one more time, “Loretta” gets set up on spare, pre-programmed drums and runs through what is easily one of the best and more typically gothic rock cuts on the album. There, those who have been consistently trying to find some stable footing throughout the album’s running will finally be rewarded as the song’s scarifying rhythm locks in throws listeners around a racetrack – leaving them completely uncertain at every turn. For his part, Bateh turns in another excellent, Nick Cave-inspired vocal performance, and lines like, “’Jake Saint lived his life like his namesake’/ His wife, Mae, eulogized with a laugh/ After the wake, she pried open his suitcase/ Found a knife and a stash of women’s photographs/ Typists with their lipstick kissed off/ Fingers and thumbs, like guns, pressed to their temples/ Said to her daughter, Loretta/ ‘If there’s anything you’ll miss, grab it”’ come dangerously close to derailing the proceedings again, but still feel solid and satisfying somehow, at both song’s and album’s end.
And, when the needle does lift, listeners may find that they’re just as confused by the album’s end as they were by its’ beginning. By definition, the way it plays – its refusal to find a consistent energy or sound, its defiance of conventional structure or form – make Birthmarks incredibly frustrating, but that inability to peg it down easily will get listeners to run through the entirety of Birthmarks again – and then again and again. When they stand back from it, listeners who have experienced Birthmarks will find that they hope Bambara will return with a more consistent record but, even if they don’t do that, those same listeners will just hope that the band returns with another album. [Bill Adams]
Artist:
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Album:
Bambara’s Birthmarks LP is out now on Wharf Cat/Bella Union. Buy it here, on the band’s official website.
