Restrained and delicate, the new single from New York’s Bandits on the Run is a beautifully-crafted ballad. In contrast to many songs from the Bandits, the gentle instrumentation in Rough Magic is sparse, which serves to highlight the band’s sweetly melodic singing from the three vocalists: Adrian Blake Enscoe, Sydney Shepherd and Regina Strayhorn. This is a special vocal performance, gorgeously tuneful and pure and controlled. The interplay between the voices of these former buskers is truly magical; Rough Magic is a harmonic joy.
There’s a real sense of poetry and truth in the lyrics for Rough Magic, a song that explores what it means to take our time, to slow things down and to let things fall away. Poignant and profound, these words rest with you, leaving listeners in a contemplative, reflective mood.
Edited by Rico Lebron and shot entirely on Regina Strayhorn’s childhood camcorder, the video for Rough Magic was created in the remote house in the Catskill Mountains where the band put together their brand new album, which is out now. It captures elements of the process and the camaraderie and feels like a memory of a special time spent together in musical collaboration and friendship. This isolated home, generously offered by friends as a writing refuge, had a real and literal effect on the writing process and songs: threaded through the music are the sounds of cars on the driveway, the tumbling babble of the brook nearby, birdsong and peepers (small frogs that inhabit the local streams and ponds). The reverb that is unique to the walls and spaces of this home will be forever melded with this music.
Rough Magic is the title track from the new record (check it out here), which is the follow-up to the band’s well-received debut full-length release, The Criminal Record. Ever inventive and artfully-creative, the band say of the new album: “With a reverence for imperfection, grit, commitment, an acceptance that chaos is inevitable, and a deep gratitude for the friendships that are truly the foundation for everything — ‘Rough Magic,’ like love, is both a noun and a verb. It’s the goal and the method. It’s the god we’re evoking and welcoming into the room with each song we write and each show we play. At our core, we’re NYC buskers. We’re throwing our jackets on the ground and playing troubadour style — timeless and evergreen. We know the alchemy at play when you dare to believe that an empty section of a subway platform full of strangers can turn into a concert hall with new friends. None of this is perfect, or requires permission, it only asks that you dare your heart to be seen — even with all the rough edges. Because it’s rough, it’s magic.”
