by Jonathan Bannister (@j_utah)
A drowned baby in a bathtub. Death cruising the back roads of Georgia in a pinto, filling the car’s small inside with his giant frame. Pyro lovers fresh out of the asylum. Lovers hell bent on keeping their love alive forever by burning their lives to the ground. Welcome to the world of Stray, the newest and best album from Bambara. Bambara have stepped fully into their persona as the house band for the last roadhouse you stop at before crossing over from the land of the living to the land of the dead. The soundtrack for your journey down the River Styx. The Bad Seeds and Morphine pulped in a blender with a couple of dashes of Protomartyr/The Fall attitude. A band Sailor and Lula might find hotter than Georgia asphalt.
But lest we get too into the weeds, Stray is first and foremost something to be listened to. Bambara is a band after all and a damn good one. “Miracle” ushers you into the album’s world, like a heavy red curtain pulling back to allow entry. The stage is set as the bass line swings in, all swagger and sin as it begins the story of Miracle. The mood coming off the song is thick. It sets the world of these stories clear in your mind. Dark, muggy nights, the pavement shining slick. Elsewhere, “Serafina” drives and churns as it spits and crackles out its tale of doomed lovers. The song headed like hell down the highway, barely slowing down to catch its breath in the choruses.
The album is haunted by reverb, like memories echoing across our characters brains. Horns skronking out, laying down the sultry vibe. Drums heavy on snare rolls and crash cymbals. Keeping the pace of the album at a steady gallop through much of it. The twang of the guitar almost surf-like while the bass provides attitude. The album is a tight, cohesive, whole musically. Everything acting to service to the stories. Two favorites on the album seem to feature Death as a main character and are also songs where the music slows down, “Stay Cruel” and “Made For Me”. The music providing what all good crime fiction has, that ever present sense of melancholy. An inevitability that it’s all gonna go wrong but can’t anything be done about it.
Death looms large across the album both for the characters and as one himself who weaves in and out of most of the songs on the album. Bambara’s Death cuts a striking picture. Grossly overweight, carrying around a collection of memento’s from past kills. Drinking too sweet drinks and hating on all the damn lightening bugs. Stray is pure noir with a southern gothic sensibility. A collection of short stories in album form, that would fit comfortably on your shelf next to your worn books by Jim Thompson and Flannery O’Conner. Broken characters who weave in and out of each others stories. Stories that all have but one end, the same end that we all have coming.