Saturday 20 April 2013

Stolen Babies - Naught (2012)



Stolen Babies is a Los Angeles based band and Naught is their second album.

This band has labelled their music as post-everything. I am tempted to agree with them. This though is supposed to be a review so I have to be a bit more precise than that. Not easy when it comes to this album and their music.

OK...... The music is female vocals lead in the Edit Piaf. Very good vocals. The music is a curious mix of cabaret, death metal (!), math metal, chamber rock, avant-garde, theatre music, goth and movie soundtrack. Yes, post-everything. The music goes from harsh to warm. Forwards and backwards along this whole rainbow, it goes. The use of accordion adds a lot of cabaret feeling. The harsh male vocals adds a death metal edge to the music.

The end result is fascinating. That is, after recovering my jaw from the floor to where it dropped when I was listening to this album for the first time, some days ago. My jaw has really never recovered from that experience. This album is not what I would call my normal music. It is most definate an avant-garde album. Or as they would probably label it: Post-avant garde.

....Whatever name given to this baby, it very much work. It is far too fragmented to really work as an album. But it is also surprisingly melodic too. Some of the songs are pretty naive melodic too. Almost like children rhymes. In this respect, I get a lot of Gong (the Daevid Allen version) vibes here. Yes, fans of Gong will understand this album. The music on Naught is also far more progressive than most of what passes as progressive these days. The music sounds fresh and vital. It also sounds organic. There is no great tracks here though. But this is still a very good album from a band who often tours USA and beyond. I am pretty sure they are great on stage. Make sure you catch them.

3.5 points

The bandpage

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