Banshee Tree Blur the Lines Between Dream and Reality on Lush ‘Bad Luck’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

On the last song of Bad Luck, Banshee Tree’s new sophomore release, lead singer and guitarist Thom LaFond sings what sounds like an off-handed comment on one of many absurd and surreal situations the album uncovers: “It’s a privilege to see what you can only believe.”

What may be a wry truism in the context of the song feels much larger near the conclusion of an album that journeys through sleeping and waking as if the two realms have opened their borders. The listener is left to puzzle out what belongs where, while the ultimate reality seems always to lie just beyond the tangible, natural world. You have to believe it to see it.

Bad Luck follows Banshee Tree’s eponymous debut album after a gap of nearly five years. During the lengthy recording process, violinist Nick Carter left the band. His contribution to “Stellar Jay Theme” is about the only thing that reminds listeners of the band’s former sound, which was lighter in tone and willing to let its jazz influence inhabit the harmonic changes of its songs.

When saxophonist and keyboardist Jesse Shantor replaced Carter, the band had to find itself again in the new context it had created. They came out of the other end of this process with an album that they had labored over, one that manages to create a unifying sound from a wealth of diversity.

Banshee Tree is inventive and adaptable here, having shunted the jazz influence from their song structures to the way LaFond and Shantor color the songs with their solos and fills, allowing the band to take on different styles. Jason Bertone on upright bass and Michelle Pietrafitta on drums combine to make a rhythm section that is reliable and open enough to support the soloists’ whims. On background vocals, Pietrafitta has the perfect timbre match for LaFond, balancing his lower register whether singing harmony or in unison. 

“Look High Over the Mountain,” Bad Luck’s opener, begins with a stately introduction from a triad of saxophones, playing the chord progression for a piano melody. “Home like a language I never speak,” LaFond sings, before delving into a rap-adjacent melody that gives the emotion room to wander. But no matter how dark and restless LaFond’s lyrics and melodies become, the band remains purposeful, almost relaxed, even as it shifts through styles, builds tension on the outros, or, in the case of the opener, remains dirge-like under LaFond’s suddenly loud and aggressive guitar solo.

The title track picks up the pace with a Cuban feel whose dancy groove contrasts with the opening line: “I fell asleep while I was driving/ First I told the secrets of my soul.” The band alternates between the Cuban thing and a straight chorus as LaFond spills his guts and sings, “If I could shake off this bad luck, I’d be making real good time.” The outro to this number provides the first extended look at Banshee Tree in solo mode, with LaFond taking choruses on both classical and electric guitars. But the real revelation here is Shantor on soprano saxophone, who picks up LaFond’s exit run and builds his own solo from a mix of klezmer-like noodling and changes on harmonic territory often inhabited by Branford Marsalis. 

Banshee Tree ratchets up the pace a few more notches on “Bright Blue Lights,” with a four-on-the-floor insistence and controlled melodic structure that recalls Mumford and Sons in their more persuasive prime. Using the saxophone as the harmony voice above LaFond while Pietrafitta sings unison is a clever ruse, and the saxophone arrangement on the outro adds harmonic depth to a style that, in recent years, has been done to death.

Bad Luck is hardly able to go wrong for the next five songs. Though styles continue to diversify (witness LaFond’s acoustic cowboy rhythm on “Might Stay”), a measure of self-reference keeps the material from eccentricity. LaFond’s guitar part on “Company of Crows” recalls his part on the opener, while “Stellar Jar Theme” echoes the former song as if a melancholic coda. The Denver, Colorado-based band reaches up the road to Boulder and borrows Andy Thorn from Leftover Salmon for a banjo spot on “Glue,” a song whose down-home jam feels like a release of the minor-keyed “Might Stay.”“Stars Above the Lightning” closes the album in the same dark and foreboding territory as “Look High Over the Mountain” and “Company of Crows.” This time, the band jams over a monolithic riff that lends some urgency to LaFond’s reversal of the old phrase “seeing is believing.” At 8 songs and about 34 minutes, Bad Luck is a wonderful, almost flawless album, and a big sonic step forward for Banshee Tree. This is the kind of record that makes you hope they don’t take as long to make the next one.