Bambara share new single “Face Of Love”
From upcoming album “Birthmarks” out 14th March via Bella Union
UK live dates in April
Next month Brooklyn trio Bambara release their anticipated fifth album Birthmarksdue out 14th March via Bella Union and on Wharf Cat Records in North America. The follow-up to their 2020 breakthrough Stray, the album was created in collaboration with co-producer Graham Sutton (These New Puritans, Jarvis Cocker, Sea Power) from UK experimental pioneers Bark Psychosis and features guest vocals by Madeline Johnston (Midwife), Emma Acs (Crack Cloud) and Bria Salmena. Following the singles “Pray To Me” and “Letters From Sing Sing”, today Bambara share new single “Face Of Love”, the final preview of the upcoming album.
Dramatic and damning, the final glimpse of what is shaping to be one of the most exhilarating album releases of 2025 and then some. With the pick of the strings, the mighty keys, and low piano notes, this blend of orchestral greatness commences, powering the way of the intricacies of this ensemble. Later joined with the brooding baritone vocals cutting through the ardent soundscape with this fierce biblical direction. The track cascades with a sweeping momentum, pushing through the sweeter harmonies to harsher drops. The intricate lyrics add to this utterly captivating flair, a wordsmith that conquers the vision. The movement of this voyage is carefully layered, with brutalist tones bursting through, mirroring this impulsive scene, which is charged up by the fierce romanticism of the words.
Where “Letters From Sing Sing” was a sample of Bambara’s customary hard charging sound and “Pray To Me” to me was described as “the kind of driving, anthemic, cinematic and darkly romantic song that Bambara do so well” by BrooklynVegan, “Face of Love” sees the trio explore new territory. The track is as hypnotic and disorienting as the recollection in its story, Reid sing-speaking over a twilit track inspired by DJ Shadow and Cocteau Twins. Blaze cites other brooding, atmospheric acts like Massive Attack and Portishead as influences on this more textured, restrained iteration of Bambara’s sound.
Commenting on the track Bambara vocalist Reid Bateh says: “The story begins when a server at a diner reminds a man of a woman from his past. Inspiration for the music came from listening to Cocteau Twins songs reversed and slowed down. It features guest lead vocals from Madeline Johston (Midwife), backing vocals by Jen Monroe and harp played by Marilu Donovan (LEYA).”
Birthmarks is a reincarnation of sorts for the trio — Twin brothers Reid (vocals) and Blaze Bateh (drums), alongside childhood friend William Brookshire (bass) — altogether. Five years removed from Stray, and three from their 2022 EP Love On My Mind, Birthmarks inevitably arrives with the weight of a new chapter after a lengthy absence. Long ago having established their brand of magnetic darkness — equally formed by the grit of their adopted New York City home and the mysterious corners of the Georgian swamps that raised them — Bambara found themselves in a period of slow, laborious evolution. Birthmarks emerges directly from the band’s favoured aesthetics and themes but captures them with a new sense of sonic adventurousness and thematic subtlety, resulting in a collection of songs that are somehow both the band’s most apocalyptic and most poignant.
Bambara’s music has always had a literary bent, and that has become more pronounced on recent albums, as Reid has become increasingly focused on narrative storytelling through his lyrics. On 2018’s Shadow On Everything that took the form of a novelistic narrative that ran throughout the record, whereas Stray was more like a collection of short stories, partly inspired by his fellow Georgian Flannery O’Connor. Birthmarks may be his most ambitious narrative work to date, weaving together a vast saga spanning decades, delivering an allusive and chronologically scrambled story of depraved men and angelic women over music veering from dreamlike to nightmarish.
The album also traverses wide swaths of new sonic territory for Bambara, blending their customary serrated post-punk with influences like DJ Shadow, Cocteau Twins, Massive Attack and Portishead. “Letters From Sing Sing” makes for an interesting entry point, as it’s both the track that hews closest to the dramatic, muscularity of their earlier albums, while incorporating a new textural depth in its arrangement that reveals just how far they’ve come.
Bambara are a once-in-a-generation band of intrepid experimentation and compulsive storytelling. For those who crave potent and electrifying music in the lineage of its most celebrated literarily-inclined auteurs – Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen et al – they are, without question, the real deal.
Bambara UK & EU Tour:
Weds 16 April – FR, Nantes – Stereolux
Fri 18 April – NL, Tilburg – Roadburn Festival
Sat 19 April – LU, Esche – Out Of The Crowd Festival
Tues 22 April – UK, Brighton – Komedia
Weds 23 April – UK, Birmingham – Hare & Hounds
Thurs 24 April – UK, Leeds – Brudenell Social Club
Fri 25 April – UK, Glasgow – Room 2
Sat 26 April – UK, Salford – The White Hotel
Mon 28 April – UK, Bristol – The Fleece
Tues 29 April – UK, London – The Garage
Thurs 01 May – BE, Brussels – AB Club
Fri 02 May – NL, Groningen – Vera
Sat 03 May – DE, Hamburg – Molotow
Tues 06 May – SE, Stockholm – Bar Brooklyn
Weds 07 May – NO, Oslo – Blä
Fri 09 May – DK, Copenhagen – Loppen
Sat 10 May – DE, Berlin – Lido
Mon 12 May – DE, Munich – Ampere
Tues 13 May – DE, Cologne – Helios 37
Weds 14 May – FR, Reims – La Cartonnerie
Thurs 15 May – FR, Paris – La Maroquinerie
1. Hiss
2. Letters From Sing Sing
3. Face Of Love
4. Pray To Me
5. Holy Bones
6. Elena’s Dream
7. Because You Asked
8. Dive Shrine
9. Smoke
10. Loretta
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