by Devin Birse (@devvvvi.b)
A smoky interiority marks Bingo Fury’s debut, like a damp jazz club where it rained so heavily that even through the windows the outside is out of view. Across its eight tracks, the Bristol avant-garde outfit led by Jack Ogborne as the titular Bingo Fury has marked out their most distinctive sonic vision yet, a contemplative vocal-jazz noir marked out by glimmers of post-minimalism and sharp stabs of no-wave extremism. While Ogborne's vision has always been unique, Bats Feet for a Widow feels like the project's most realized creation yet, a never-ending closing hour of slipping memories stained by oblique religious imagery.
Bats Feet for a Widow is a remarkably tight piece of experimentalism, one that knows just when to give the listener what they want and when to hold back and leave them to linger. Across the album instruments exit and enter the frame, on “Unlistening” the core piano ballad is punctuated by a gentle wave of electric guitar, like fog rolling across a skyline, the brief cornett honks from Harry Furniss punctuate the nocturnal mood with a soft haunted melancholy. It’s the work of these fellow players that keeps Bingo Fury so engaging, the tense yet smooth bass lines of Meg Jenkins ricocheting against the precise drumming of Henry Terret to create a rhythm section that can glide and fall with equal ease. When the electric guitar comes into play either in the hands of Rafi Cohen or Ogborne himself it's sharp yet understated. On “Mr Stark” a buzzsaw riff forms the basis of the track yet never feels truly the focus, less the star and more the stage upon which the other instruments to play.
That’s not to say there aren’t moments of maximalism on Bats Feet for a Widow, on lead single “Power Drill” a flurry of cornet honks duel with razor-sharp DNA-esque guitar lines as the jangle of keys is turned into a twist of Reichian post-minimalism. The lyrics are at there most interesting during these bizarre interplays of influences, on “I’ll Be Mountains” a rumbling piano line is intersected with industrial clangs, the initial Tom Waits creep briefly breaking into a sound that mirrors the disjointed melodies of This Heat. The core constant at the heart of these tangos between the avant-garde and the melodic is Ogbrone’s voice, a bleak bassy croon.
It's his vocals and lyrics that give the project its defining characteristics. His low croons at times recall Baker or Walker but these comparisons quickly become inadequate. His voice a smidge curter and sharper, the gloomy cabaret act getting curtailed by a sudden deadpan delivery. It’s a weapon well measured, his voice never overtakes the tracks or the tracks to overtake the voice, but rather through the roomy production enough space is given to render both distinct and complimentary. Yet even then Ogborne's true mastery appears in his lyrics. Sardonic, surreal, and gothic in equal measure, they recall those late American greats of both the beats and the nineties alt-country scene. In interviews he’s extolled his love of David Berman's poetry collection Actual Air, and a similar blend of depressive wit seeps through every sharp line.
The opening phrase “like a widow left with a mirrored ceiling/I can't escape certain images” seems to crystallize the album's core sensation of being trapped within memory. At other points, there's a bizarre comedy in his description of “perverted crosshairs” yet across the album a core theme of loss and religion is intertwined. The descriptions of “Jesus blood on his hands” or the bitterness in Ogborne's tone as he sings of how his “cup overflows into you” conveys a turbulence of nostalgia and anger. Yet the core aesthetic of Bats Feet is a distinct noirish beauty, references to locations across Bristol colliding with repeated mentions of “leather sky” to spark the imagination. The album is at its best lyrically when these bits of oddity bump against reality, on closer “Leather Sky” the sparks of surrealism are crushed by the pure weight of its simple chorus, “I’m trying to give you everything/it all gets in the way,” the sharp turn to realism as crushing as any heartbreak.
Despite its brief length Bats Feet for a Widow is a remarkably memorable album. Bingo Fury’s unique mix of vocal jazz with shades of experimental post-punk from decades past and brilliant lyrics come together to create a distinctly noirish vision of Bristol and its surrounding landscapes. While stained by moments of blood and grief, there is a deep comfort to the record, like smoking a cigarette out a window in pure bleak relief.