Gold Baby self-release their debut EP, ‘Rabbits’, on 26 March. The four songs find Siân Alex offering astute observations on everything from her own struggles with OCD to female identity, American ghost towns and the medieval notion of cockaigne – an imaginary place of luxury where physical comforts and pleasures are always availble.
Sole drumbeats and slackerpop guiter hooks open ‘Bodie’, a song that reminded us of Frances Quinlan with its melodies and soul-searching lyrics steeped in sadness: ‘There were three of us left. You, me and the ghost’; ‘Is there life? Is it a dream?’ This is swiftly followed by ‘2041’, a song that opens in art rock fashion with an underlying anger in its message about gender disparity – ‘They say it’s absurd, they say I misheard. Things aren’t always as they seem’ – before evolving into a crashed tangle of riffs, impassioned screams and pulsating drums: ‘There’s a man ready to head out there. They asked me but they asked…. And I said NO!’ After this, the song heads in a more experimental and gently mathy direction, sitting in the same kind of space as Toe.
‘Betty’ is a confessional and introspective piece of storytelling in line with Fiona Apple, one of Siân’s heroes, that again asks big questions about where we all fit in the world: ‘Somebody called me Cinderella so I lit the fire alarm’; ‘Who was I supposed to be?’ Darkness then rises to the fore with the admission that ‘That’s not the whole story. My Mama tucked me in too tight, my Mama sewed me to the bed, my Mama baked all my ideas and kicked me in the head’. This continues through on the final song on the EP, recent single ‘Captain Dorego’, as Siân talks through a lengthy to-do list that takes in cutting wood for a fire, hitch-hiking and ‘killing the driver just for kicks’ – all against a backdrop of twinkly emo and pure pop melodies.
We’ve enjoyed Gold Baby’s music for a while now and are delighted to see them expand their sound in such grand style across these four songs. Dig in.