Blood Moon Wedding is an intriguing project, a collection of musings on the human condition as filtered through the ‘lived experience’ of a pair of doomed, star-crossed lovers who live out a drug and booze-fuelled, Bonnie and Clyde existence in the badlands of the American West.
Sounds a bit pretentious? Well, in the hands of people who didn’t know what they were doing that might well have been the case, but, in the hands of BMW’s two main protagonists, Steve Lake (old punks will remember him from uber Brit punx Zounds) and Mia Dean (no, I hadn’t heard of her either, until now, but the album’s press release details a pretty impressive career across a variety of platforms – I’ll let you do the investigating) the whole thing becomes an entirely believable saga of hapless love set against a wretched background that makes absolute sense if you give yourself to the tale.
Lake’s downtrodden Englishness keeps the whole thing grounded – his deadpan vocal counterpoint to the more recognisably structured work of Dean is absolutely key to keeping the story in balance – but it’s the wonderful voice of Dean that gives wings to tracks like Looking For Us.
The album’s centrepiece, Murder Ballad, is an absolute triumph; Essentially a tone poem mixing Lake’s prose and Dean’s ethereal voice-generated soundscapes, it tells a gritty tale of an unfortunate encounter in Bute, Montana whereby a drunken assailant is dispatched by Dean in cold blood. Lake’s delivery is fabulous; his description of the Texan aggressor, likened to the Angel of Death, will live in your mind’s eye forever once you’ve heard it, not just for the wonderful images the words conjure but also the mordant humour that runs through the delivery. The choral climax of the track is exquisite, pulling every last ounce of drama out of the track.
Believability is the key here; Lake and Dean’s tale is told so well you can’t help but be taken in by their story. When the pair wed, you feel real joy, divorcing whatever misgivings you may have about their behaviours had they happened in real life and, well, rooting for the pair. It’s a strange, wild ride, let me tell you…
Wild is actually one of the other highlights on the album (if you’ll excuse my rather clumsy segue); A straightup piece of Bowieesque whimsy, it’s plaintive brass figures give a new-romantic-goes-spaghetti-western chic to the track that’s is incredibly intriguing.
Lake and Dean’s voices – the one serviceable at best, the other downright Angelic – were clearly made to work together, despite the pair being a World away from one another in their past creative lives, and it really feels like a privilege to be invited into this world they’ve created. Come one, come all – it doesn’t matter what sort of music you like normally, this is something you really need to here.
Blood Moon Wedding releases on April 7th.
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