Stash, the second album from BCMC — the Chicago guitar-and-keys duo of Bill MacKay and Cooper Crain — pulls a range of styles from their minimalist set-up across eight tracks.
It arrives on Drag City and is the follow-up to 2023’s Foreign Smokes. The album was preceded by two early singles, ”Kaleidosmoke’ and ‘Tête-à-Tête’. Although Stash certainly feels related to that debut, the music here is more excitable, with the musicians happy to explore dynamically within a song.
Take ‘Badland Rag’, one of two seven-minute-plus tracks: the music starts as a future western soundtrack crossed with mariachi styles; there’s a distinctly broad and cinematic feel to the sound, with Bill’s guitar veering from…