Reflecting roots in Athens, Georgia, there’s always been a strong element of Southern Gothic in Bambara’s music. This is something the now Brooklyn-based trio have embraced with fifth album Birthmarks, a collection of speak-sing story-songs that has both a commercial sheen and an underlying eeriness.
The uncanny quotient is especially high on ‘Face Of Love’, which features guest co-lead vocals from Madeline Johnston (Midwife). As hypnotic as, of all unlikely touchstones, Robbie Robertson’s sultry ‘Somewhere Down The Crazy River’, it’s a track built by creating atmosphere rather than driven by a riff.
Yet while it conjures up nights when the heat and humidity are high, Birthmarks was made far from the American South. To be precise, basic tracks were laid down in Ramsgate in the early summer of 2023. Graham Sutton of post-rock experimentalists Bark Psychosis acted as producer. According to drummer Blaze Bateh, Sutton challenged Bambara to look anew at what they were doing. In particular, the band focused more on beats than in the past. It’s a recording process Bateh has likened to reframing scenes in a movie from different camera angles. The trio – Bateh, his twin brother, vocalist-guitarist Reid Bateh, and bassist William Brookshire – then worked further on the songs back in the US.
The tracks also incorporate guest musicians on saxophone, trumpet, vibraphone, harp, violin and viola. In an echo of The National’s I Am Easy To Find, there are vocals from four different female singers, albeit these contributions aren’t always foregrounded. Recording Birthmarks seems to have been a convoluted process, but it never sounds overcooked. Just the opposite.
Part of the clarity of the finished LP perhaps grows from a sense there’s an underlying narrative in the oftentimes veiled lyrics of Reid Bateh. A character called Elena recurs, notably acting as narrator on the jazz-inflected ‘Elena’s Dream’. A Lynchian sense of obsession and there being more going on than might initially be obvious pervades Birthmarks.
Nevertheless, this remains a rock album that won’t sound out of place in the daytime schedule on 6Music. ‘Letters From Sing Sing’ begins with deliberately muffled drums before guitar lines cut loose. Ballad ‘Because You Asked’ is melodic and insistent. Closer ‘Loretta’ comes across like a twisted drive-time anthem. As with Doves or Interpol around the turn of the millennium, Bambara look set to bring music imbued with equal parts melancholy and menace into the mainstream.
