Banditos
Banditos
(Bloodshot Records)

I’d venture that you haven’t quite heard a band that sounds like Banditos. First of all, there are three equally competent vocalists here, who as much harmonize with one another as take lead. The band is also as much informed by Stephen Pierce’s banjo as Corey Parsons’ electric guitar. It’s a wild mix of kind-of-county/kind-of-rock/kind-of-Cajun/kind-of-punk. Opening with the metallic strut of organ and banjo battling around a shaking beat, the rockin’ “The Breeze” grabbed me from the get-go. “Waitin’,” a country stopper with simple guitar lines and that wild vocal of Mary Beth Richardson, reveals a good mix of wailing banjo with Randy Wade’s shunk-a-shunk train beat snare. “Golden Grease” slinked some backwater danger, banjo and guitar drums all rockin’ yet held right on a precipice of undulating waves, while “No Good” is a big, slow guitar snappin’ torch song bringing Richardson’s warble to a good aching. It sounds like we have a kazoo leading with Danny Vines’ popping bass and honky tonk piano on “Long Gone, Anyway.” We get slow sliding and true country on the positively swingy “Blue Mosey #2” (a nice harmony here too between the male and female vocals as well). I think a song like their ender here, “Preachin’ to the Choir,” is where the Banditos make their mark. The mix of banjo round lead guitar strikes (both Parsons and Jeffery Salter play guitar here) harmonies and laid back beat with again that feeling of menace, does this band best.