Genre: Dark Folk / Folk Noir

Bain Wolfkind has been infiltrating the post industrial music genre under the radar for several years now. I first encountered Bain Wolfkind via his contributions to Der Blutharsch where he has become an active and integral member of the band. On the most recent Der Blutharsch album “When Did Wonderland End?” Bain’s signature style can be heard surfacing on several songs a number of which feature Bain on leading vocals such as the title track “When Did Wonderland End?” When Bain is not assisting Albin Julius and fellow Der Blutharsch coconspirators he is busy recording for his self titled solo project and his electronic project Novo Homo. Following the debut Bain Wolfkind 7” titled “Love Letters” Bain has recently released his first full length recording “Music For Lovers & Gangsters” which is avaliable as a 12” vinyl and CD.

Like the title suggests Bain Wolkind’s new eleven song offering plays like a diary of confessions culled from the life of someone who has spent their life imbedded in the criminal underground. “Music For Lovers & Gangsters” is a collection of song memoirs that tell seedy tales of crime, passion, and intoxication. The music and lyrics invoke images gathered from a life spent in the underbelly of society where morals and ethics are freely traded for profit, power and ultimately self destruction.

When the album begins it’s as if you have unknowingly stumbled down a dark piss ridden alley in an unflattering part of town. As you stumble through the iron door of an obscure dive you suddenly realize that your journey has brought you to a place many would prefer to never know. As your eyes adjust to the low light you spot a suave character seated in a shadowy corner of the bar. His heavy leather trench coat drapes about his body concealing a hidden arsenal while his eyes read you like a cheap novel. Empty whisky glasses lay clustered like souvenirs on the table top and an ashtray rests to one side buried in a pile of crushed butts. As your eyes lock with this dark stranger you are motioned to join the party at the table. Two prostitutes, one with a blackened eye, quickly make room for you while the toothless laughing dwarf at the table ceases his incessant smile as you take a seat. You can’t be certain whether the man resting his face on the table to your right is dead or drunk but you sit down regardless. After a few potent drinks the stranger begins sharing stories telling tales of a life spent running whores, making fast easy money, and killing when he can’t run or hide, or when it was a matter of pride. You listened mesmerized and gripped by the harrowing story that enfolds…

Bain Wolfkind expertly taps into a culture and way of life that is alien to most folks living a daily grind of work and family. Bain converts short stories into songs giving life to tales of destitution taken from a renegade life lived on the edge in defiance of consequence and law. Bain’s music provocatively summons references to fellow writers and artists such as Jean Paul Sartre, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, and photographer Geoff Cordner. Images of sleazy downtown hotels, back alley craps games, acts of murderous passion, and a general disregard for everything touted as good and redeemable all blurs together in the music of Bain Wolfkind dragging the listener into the slums of their own inner consciousness.

The music on “Music For Lovers & Gangsters” is created with a dismal blend of instrumentation that sounds as if it has been gathered from the same dark dredges as the lyrics. Songs are based mostly around guitar and drums with occasional harmonica and piano. The music is a blending of styles that includes hints of lounge, jazz, blues, rock, folk and western music. Lines blur and styles incestuously mix in this medley were boundaries are established only to discarded. Bain’s irreverence extends to the music as he enslaves any and every musical style that furthers his unlawful intentions. The lyrics are delivered exclusively by Bain Wolfkind in a variety of styles that range from gravely dispiriting elegies akin to Tom Waitts to quavering ballads that attempt to wrap rough callused hands around the fragile subject of love. The music has a definitive low-fi sound reminiscent of a bar room recording adding to the raw authenticity and character of the music.

“Music For Lovers & Gangsters” opens with the provocative and lively song “Pimp Stick.” “Pimp Stick” would be just as at home on a Novo Homo album as this Bain Wolfkind alnum. The song begins with electric and bass guitar throbbing in unison as drums play a muscled beat. The music is shouldered with a sleazy lounge sensibility that invokes a particular bohemianism that reeks of smoke, drugs, and alcohol. The guitar reverberates like a swaggering thug while the drums warn of the potential for violence. Bain swoons in a gravely voice singing about working the girls on the street with threats and a heavy hand. Speaking to his whores he tells them to walk the streets or else he will ‘walk’ them with his pimp stick. He speaks of women as property or cattle that must be paraded in order to earn their keep. There is no regret or shame in this game for Bain, these are his hoes and they better do as he says! This squalid introduction sets the tone for the album as Bain lets the tales flow like a man driven by hard liquor and loose women.

“This Town Will Kill You” is the seventh song on the album and it tells a tale that will be all too familiar to many of us. The song begins with steadily strummed chords of dribbled western guitar that echo the last desperate confessions of a man who’s time is nearing an end. The music is a bit surreal like a David Lynch soundtrack in which dream, memory, and reality melt together in a sordid stew of incomprehension. The lethargic guitars are joined by drums that stutter out beats as if winded and near exhaustion. Bain sings over the music as if emerging from under a bridge broke and stumbling. The lyrics talk about getting out of town before you die I the squalor of your own existence. The tale is one of escaping before being swallowed alive when your debts and regrets surpass your ability to repay. Its one of those times when the back alley craps game stole your last buck, the hooker you have been falling I love with had her pimp beat the shit out of you for stalking her and you notice a yellow pus oozing from your groin after you woke up from another long night in a cold pool of blood stained vomit. Bain gives voice to the lowest moments in life with the ease of an experienced veteran.

“Driving All Night” is the final chapter in this sleazy musical novel and it concludes the album with a final grasp at the smothering loneliness that threatens to engulf the renegade man. “Driving All Night” begins with the sound of rain and thunderstorms played against harmonica and piano. The piano and harmonica sound as if they are being played at the end of long set in a bar whose patrons are only interested in reaching the end of the bottle as they quicken the end of their sad lives. The harmonica sings behind the piano as if wheezing for a last breathe of clean air while the piano plays the blues of despair and ragged times. Drums join the song along with Bain’s signature voice beginning a narrative of driving alone during a rainy night through the desert. The cars trunk contains a body and your head is screaming for sleep and clarity but deep inside you know you must keep driving. At the end of this long road waits a faded silicone injected stripper in a dilapidated trailer home. You drive because you know she believes in you and you can no longer believe in yourself. In her eyes you are a hero not a sick criminal and it is for her that you drive your old rusted car to the brink of collapse, it’s for her that you never look back.

Bain Wolfkind successfully conjures a bankrupt world of impoverished and corrupt morality that reflects a facet of human reality and civilization that most artists would rather ignore. Like William Burroughs before him Bain Wolfkind tells it like he sees it basking in the dimly lit corners of underground culture where discarded syringes and aged hookers are ushered away out of site and out of mind. Traveling through the discarded remnants of social degradation has never been so sexy and inviting. “Music For Lovers & Gangsters” is a soundtrack for those who delight in what others discard, avoid, and ignore. If you have ever found comfort and kinship on the “wrong side of the tracks” then you will find this music rewarding and indulgent. “Music For Lovers & Gangsters” is music for those who like the grimy and sultry side of life. This is music for outlaws who take shelter amongst the refuse where a gun is the only thing to trust and five bucks will either buy you a cheap drink or an even cheaper blow job.