REVIEW: Baby Fox, Dum Dum Baby (Roadrunner)
- David Landgren
I came across Baby Fox a couple of years ago more or less by chance at the release of their debut album, A Normal Family. That still gets fairly regular plays around here, so I was very interested to find out how they fared the second album syndrome. The first time around they had five years of material to use; for the second album they had to come up with new -- without messing around for another five years. Not all bands succeed. I'm happy to report that they come through with flying colours.
So what does Baby Fox sound like? Broadly speaking, what they do is dub or trip-hop. The vocals of Christine Leach are the first thing that catch your attention. Imagine a bluesier Debbie Harry, soft and sensuous, with the breathiness of Curve's Toni Halliday. Then you start to pay attention to the music of Alex Gray and Dwight Clarke: the samples, the loops and the percussion. And, it is good.
The opening title track's sound matches the cover art: black, sinister, bees crawling over the face of a china doll, bandaged. Other distinctive characteristic: songs fragments, samples snatched from the brink, lasting no longer than a few bars. Check out "Bluebird" especially. That's Tennessee Williams you hear. Wonderful text.
Worthy of note is the long, rambling "The Rookery" parts I and II, that starts out as a grinding industrial crank rolling over deep trip-hop beats. Part II snaps back and forth between ambient techno a la Banco de Gaia and funked out electronica. It insinuates itself slowly, unfolding its immensities upon repeated listenings.
"Nearly Beautiful" swells up from the depths, built around a synth loop of some morbid merry-go-round. Filled with tension yet never coming to a crest, it leaves one restless. Peace comes in the shape of the following track "Zodiac", a much simpler proposition stripped of nearly all samples, leaving only vocals, bass line and drum track.
They then rip it all up with "Bad Girl Love", a track that starts out with a glacially cold keyboard loop that then bursts into a kaleidescope of ersatz brass. And at around four minutes, this is one of the shorter songs - nearly all of the rest of the tracks are five minutes or longer.
The highlight of the album is the track "Hallow'een" that spans nearly eight minutes. She: "He hid himself away. He made a pact with an evil woman and disappeared last Hallow'een." He: "Woman, come pick me up, come take me down". The music peaks and troughs between wrenching intensity and soft interlude, finishing up with a long intrumental jam. Play loud!
Finally comes a syrupy sweet number "That's The Way It Is". It's corny enough to be used as a theme song for Californian teenage TV series, where all the girls have long blonde hair and the boys have shiny white teeth. It's a rather masterful achievement in that one feels like dissing it, but at the same time you can't help but feeling drawn in.
The last track "Naked Hour" is sounds a lot like Curve, a sharp snapping snare over sliding bassline, heavily-trafficked vocals, shimmering electronics and incongruous tinkling bells tbat pull the mood from sadness to beauty. "I am sworn to a way of life. I will be what I say I am," says a voice of wrenching desolation. I don't know where they dug that up from, but it sends shivers up my spine.
Dum Dum Baby grows on me with each repeated listen. Maybe it is the result of writing the entire album over the space of a few months; it has a definite cohesiveness not present in their first album. It contains, by my reckoning, three drop-dead tracks - and the rest of them are no slouches, either. A definite winner.
The band has their own web site at http://www.babyfox.demon.co.uk (notably, containing the lyrics to the album), and their label's site is at http://www.roadrun.com .
