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Review: 'SWEET BABOO'
'The Boombox Ballads'   

-  Label: 'Moshi Moshi'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '14th August 2015'

Our Rating:
"I'm walking down that empty road. It ain't empty now because I'm on it" are memorable lines from Daniel Johnston's The Sun Shines Down On Me.

There is something of Johnston's madcap wit and perverse logic in the songs of Sweet Baboo (aka Welshman Stephen Black). "I just want to be on my own, as long as I'm with you", he sings on Got To Hang Onto You.

As far as I know, Black is not bipolar and has no history of mental illness but the strikingly individual nature of his song lyrics set him apart from standard music trends to the point that he is never likely to be wholly in or entirely out of fashion.

Black mostly writes about being lonely or being alone in love yet steers well clear of heart-tugging platitudes. Consider for example these lines from Tonight You Are A Tiger : "Let me be your phone line, let me be your dialling tone, because I am good at admin and I'm happy to take work home".

Despite his deliberately offbeat lyric-writing, Black says he "wants to explore more what it is to be a ‘Singer’ as opposed to a ‘Singer Songwriter’" on this, his fifth album. Yet, although he works with an arranger (Paul Jones) for the first time, it is his personality that dominates. Only one track, I Just Want To Be Good, written by friend Cate Le Bon, could be said to take on a third person perspective.

The most ambitious track is You Got Me Time Keepingon which he duets with Laura Bryon. With a brass and string backing, the seven minute duration combines bouncy pop with an experimental power ballad. Together with the boiling egg imagery in the video, the content here is typical of the eroticised domesticity Black brings to bear on his material.

The self conscious quirkiness appears genuine enough yet this is unashamedly nerdy in both sound and vision. As such, these are the kind of songs you will either find profoundly charming or deeply irritating.



Sweet Baboo's website
  author: Martin Raybould

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SWEET BABOO - The Boombox Ballads