On Midheaven Tempest, there are organs that sound like a funeral, strings straight out of a horror film and guitars that move from calm to chaos without much warning. Sienna Bordello sings as if she is switching between several characters at once. The London quintet Black Bordello — Sienna, Daniel Gowers, Melody Wayfare, Jerome Alexandre and Nick Dimitriov — return with an EP produced by Balazs Altsach that pulls together art rock, post-punk, psychedelia, cabaret, trip-hop and gothic drama without forcing any of it into one neat sound.
The songs move through silence, sudden shifts in intensity and childlike melodies that start to feel a little wrong. There are bare pianos, heavy basslines, almost processional drums, abrasive fuzz and strings that do very little to soften things. You can hear traces of Portishead’s ghostly trip-hop, Kate Bush’s theatricality, PJ Harvey’s rawness and Nick Cave’s darkness, but Black Bordello drag all of that into their own space — dirtier, stranger and much less comfortable.
Lyrically, Midheaven Tempest is full of absent parents, withered flowers, damaged bodies, water, fire, puppets, sinners and mechanical dancers. Again and again, the EP comes back to the feeling of being stuck inside something you only half understand and have no idea how to get out of. Sienna sings from grief, anger, shame and isolation, but also from a kind of clarity that does not make any of those things easier. Knowing there are strings does not mean knowing how to cut them.
That is where all the theatricality really works. The shifts in voice, sudden turns and near-ritualistic endings are not there just to make the songs feel bigger. They are part of how Black Bordello tell these stories. Even when everything seems to be heading towards some huge final release, the EP prefers to leave things slightly unresolved.
Midheaven Tempest does not sound excessive for the sake of it. It sounds like a band that needs all that noise, all those voices and all those silences to say something about grief, fear and loss without reducing any of it to one simple meaning. By the end, Black Bordello sound bigger, stranger and much harder to pin down than they did at the start.
Enter Midheaven Tempest here.
Live Dates
Sat 19 Sept — Oslo Hackney — London, United Kingdom
Sat 3 Oct — The Chapel at The Angel Microbrewery — Nottingham, United Kingdom
Wed 11 Nov — Kinett Kusel — Kusel, Germany
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