Bambara
Birthmarks
Wharf Cat/Bella Union
That baritone morphine drip of Reid Bateh’s vocals, juxtaposed against Bambara’s visceral post-punk sprawl, spills reincarnation myths and legends of their own creation all over the streaking, darkly charismatic Birthmarks. Smeared in a creative frenzy across a time-traveling tableau of misfits and charlatans, Bateh’s fevered narration drinks the night away with Tom Waits. Directly plugged into the Brooklyn trio’s streamlined bombast, loudly amplified to the tilt here, his swaggering, vivid prose goes on a sonic white-knuckle ride that’s anything but sober when the cab arrives to take him home.
The past is nothing but prologue, or does it linger in the present or live on to crash future parties and the afterlife? That’s what the inquisitive Bateh wants to know, despite having done his research. As intense and dramatic as it is deeply immersive and seductive, Birthmarks is Bambara’s first full-length since 2020’s Stray, their 2022 EP Love on My Mind being their last communique. An aural and literary tour de force, a whirlwind of evocative storytelling, unsavory characters of magical and mysterious invention, evangelical fervor, and painstakingly detailed scenery, Birthmarks delivers its sinister talismans with brooding menace.
With pulse-pounding excitement and sweeping urgency, the swerving, skidding guitar- and synth-driven traffic of Birthmarks moves as swiftly as the gripping anthems of TV On The Radio and Girls Against Boys, the sensory overloads “Letters from Sing Sing” and a slick, latex-clad “Loretta” — the latter swimming in cinematic noir, like the oily western mirage “Smoke” — sucked into strong currents of quickening drums and futuristic noise. Visionary and poetic, the breathtaking “Pray to Me” is even more thrilling. Edgy, clangorous, and expansive, its sleek hooks, jet-black atmosphere, and hit-and-run violence stir up an exciting adventure in propulsive sound and unsettling resonance. Danger is in the air, and it is omnipresent.
Like Protomartyr with less bark, although it flashes more industrial, metallic teeth, Birthmarks still contains the dusky DNA of Bambara’s previous work, but this is a refreshed, revitalized version of themselves. Conjuring the slow-burning malevolence that permeates “Holy Bones,” while drifting off to the surreal exoticism of “Elena_s Dream” — slurred horn and blurred vibes sliding this way and that — Bambara sings Nick Cave to sleep, bringing in female sirens to haunt his dreams. It does come like a drug, but this isn’t God’s country. ◼
