Guy Blackman - Adult Baby (Album)
There is something unmistakably Brunswick St, Fitzroy, Melbourne that emanates out of every indie pop release from that area. It’s like the warmth of a woolen cardie, and the smell of fair trade coffee pours out of your stereo along with the gentle pop gems. There is a lo-fi sound to everything that makes you feel like it was lovingly recorded in the carpeted lounge room of a share house, no matter how many proper studios were used to make it. This delightful CD from Melbourne man Guy Blackman is no different. His debut sits nicely along other Melbournites The Smallgoods and maybe something softer like Pikelet but seems to encompass all the Melbourne flower pop and soft jingle beat into one nice package. It’s sweet, unpretentious, gentle, joyful and just plain lovely. It sounds like something quite Scandinavian. Like ABBA gone on holiday, chilled out Shout Out Louds or even just plain Jens Leckman. Belle and Sebastian seem to influence every band in Fitzroy too. It doesn’t surprise me a bit that Guy managed to get Jens Leckman to duet with him on Dark and Quiet Place. A soft and moody number, that kind of swells gently but not enough to break a sweat. He in fact has numerous people cameo on the album from Art of Fighting’s Peggy singing on Johnny to members of The Crayon fields, Eddy Current and Dirty Three. There is no lack of talent making music on this release and it shows in the brilliant execution of the performances on it.
The most obvious thing you notice on the album is that it’s pop heaven. Opening grandly with Unsteady, which is heavy on the Casio keyboard, light drumming and playful tones that reminiscent of The Lucksmiths and Ben Lee circa Awake Is The New Sleep. The album launches on with one of the highlights, Gayle where we first hear the soft horns, played by some of the Ground Components lads and has moments of White Album era Beatles. The album then goes into the midnight hour with beautiful strings and acoustic guitars on, Dark and Quiet Place and Black Eyes which give us a good idea of the range of the album. It goes from mega upbeat pop to very gentle almost dark moments. There is no single band you can hear which is nice as every song sounds different and Guy makes use of thousands of instruments from piano, strings, horns and guitars to layer each song with only the instruments that it needs and not a single instrument less. Each song has a minimalist approach to it. Nothing overly difficult in what is played, arrangements or overly layered instrumentation. Just nice melodies and songs that sit nicely in the 2 minute 30 mark. This makes the album very easy to like and not threatening at all.
For all the gooey pop, dosed out in buckets, the only that lets it down is the lack of good vocals. The minimalist, lo-fi, monotonic vocals, though quite characteristic in these sorts of pop albums, I feel falls shirt of the mark even for lo-fi monotonic vocal pop albums. This is no more apparent than when it is matched against Jens Leckman on Dark and Quiet Place. Naturally the stand out songs on the album are those where the vocals are not so prominent. Particulary Gayle, Stay on the Beat and Carlton North. They are also some of the most upbeat songs as I feel the album, though has beautiful quiet moments, perhaps has too many. There are 15 tracks on the album and only a 3rd are upbeat. It may have been better to cut out some of the duller downbeat songs and make it a more even sided album.
Overall Adult Baby is stunningly produced and beautifully arranged, showing that Guy has huge talent for songwriting however he may work better as a producer than a singer. Though this album can be too downbeat at times to be a summer album hit it does have an enduring sweetness, which will warm up the colder rainy months of Melbourne.
