Band of Heathens: Stranger
Let me start this by saying I’m a Band of Heathens mark. With an album that pays some homage to one of my favorite novels of all time with the same name, “Stranger,” by Albert Camus this album was intended for me. I am the target audience. The Band of Heathens aimed this album at an audience confused, in a time of confusion. It asks questions mostly, and avoids being “preachy” while at the same time maintaining a lyrical sense of befuddlement and timeliness. I can’t speak for everyone, but I feel that - a lot of that.
We as a nation, as a people, as music lovers in the age of social media face an odd conflict. Americana and “Southern” identity while not wholly unapproached, is again under the bright lights of the musical landscape. The contrast of artists you hear on the radio and indie scenes that are “dirt road, cold beer, eagles and AMERICA!” to the soft spoken compassion and activist songwriting of others saying “listen, look, we have to protect those who need us.” It can be confusing and polarizing. Are we acting on the same information? Is that information filtered to us correctly? This isn’t intended to lay out some “secret liberal leftist agenda” or convince you to “Stand by,” so put your papaw’s shotgun away and don’t come hunt me down in my little corner of southwest Virginia paradise. It’s an important backdrop for an album that asks by and large what we’re all asking in our confused southern drawl, “huh?” While some people are firmly set in their beliefs, there are a lot of people who just wonder, how do we make sense of any of this? What agency and impact do I have? What choice do I have? Does my voice matter? Stranger by Band of Heathens seems conflicted with this same lack of self-determination. I’m not going to tell you to read “Stranger” by Camus, but it really does parallel beautifully with this album. A character with a lack of agency, who surreally stumbles through, from a day at the beach, being engaged to be married, committing murder, all at the will of others with no real sense of purpose or control or will. It’s all very existential and surreal, just like every day feels in the world now. I feel that - like a lot.
Photo by Jason Quigley
Some of the album plays out in songs that could fit anywhere in the catalog of BOH, but some songs stand out as a painting of a particularly weird, confusing and perplexing time in our little experiment. A lot of jam tracks that get you moving, some soupy blues jams that are fun. They’re all telling you a story.
“Black Cat” the story of Augustinial Fonesca immigrating to America through Ellis Island, fighting in an underground fighting ring. At first it seems surreal, but it fits thematically. A legend who killed a panther with his bare hands was 7’ tall and lived to be 99 years old. Obviously there’s some hyperbole, but it was a story that was told to the band, and they brought it to life, in a fun way that gets you moving.
“Staring at the news playing back the usual scores / There ain’t truth left / We’re getting used to it.” That line from “Truth Left” sums up a general distrust of information being handed to us, and how we’ve become comfortable with the concept that this is our new normal. It’s nihilistic and hyper concerned all in the same breath. That’s a recurring theme here. It’s wrong, but how do we get right? Before the album was released, the single “Today Is Our Last Tomorrow” set the tone. “It’s time to build a wall a thousand miles tall / Protect all that we have taken / ‘Cause if we let them in / Our way of life will end / Some people are forsaken.” A set of lyrics that points to our own shortcomings, fear mongering, and xenophobia; all with a sprinkle of assured world ending doom, and backed by a light hearted jam track. Some releases may be derided for taking a stand. Some will be derided for not going far enough. I think it’s a valid and important stance to stand up with an album like the Band of Heathens Stranger and say, “it’s all just too surreal to process.”
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