Broadcasting live from Detroit via Brooklyn, Glass Rock return with a second album: a bosom clutching union between two bands using the sparse guitar work of Tall Firs and jammers, Soft Location. Eschewing the super group tag, with a dexterous long player of subtle throbbing, intricate instrumentation suites, the album drips with the heat of a sweltering cityscape, and is manipulated by leader Kathy Leisen’s sumptuous vocals. Some have compared her work to the artful poetic qualities of Patti Smith’s delivery; other’s, the dream pop glory of Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval, or the bruised soul of Chan Marshall. But Leisen’s affecting voice is sumptuous, yet compelling -the sound of a girl constantly in a state of almost collapsing off a note, but somehow retaining a clear-eyed poise to tell the tale. Her band may lay the groundwork but it’s Leisen’s contribution that shoots this album up into the orbit of a vast, starry night sky.
The lyrics are just as beguiling: each poetic metaphor is rippled in a swirl of contrasting brittle, sweeping emotional vulnerability and bravely redemptive power. The confessional pleadings of opener, ‘Better than me’ are startlingly emotive, whilst peering through the microscope at a relationship in its final dying embers as Leisen, almost resigned and worn out, reads it the last rights (‘I’ve got no more chances/there’s been too much damage done.’) Elsewhere, ‘Please please please’ on the other hand is gloriously bluesy: the spindling interplay of bass and drums is sewn by dexterous, glacial licks, while Leisen’s begging poetic notes balance precariously on each subtle shift in rhythm (“I see your spread your arms against the waves/They fall and crash around you like some fallen stars”). While the divine ‘Tears Fall’ is a end of the night walz -heart in hand-that see’s her quiveringly seeking out her inner most pain.
‘I got fat in the centre and then fanned out’ sings Leisen on the twitching ‘Wine’ -yet another total standout- her scribbles are lashed with alcohol-soaked blues, and writer’s block. When she lifts into a sultry onomatopoeic stuttering of ‘h-ot, h-ot, h-ot air/I got hot, hot, hot air,’ that collapses into a shuffling drum beat that drips like sweat from the walls in Summertime and then stops, one can’t help feeling breathless and panting for more.
With it’s sparse production clarity and reverb-drenched vocals you could even compare parts of this record to Warpaint’s much vaunted debut album. ‘Document’ is made up of a percussion that’s nothing more tap on the side of an acoustic, whilst guitars slide like ice through Kathy Leisen’s deft midnight sketches, that throw light on a teaming city skyline. As if to emphasise a point of quality, the follow up ‘Document 2’ is a more amped up version of the original as reverb-heavy ‘Another Beer’s introspective notes are confiscated from clarity beneath rusty vocal effects, while the arrangement spins jazzily like a baby’s mobile..
‘Ourselves and each other’picks the pace up a little to a trot, with sparring guitar licks elucidating the moody atmosphere built by the intertwined bass and drum lines. A mainly instrumental track brought to a crescendo by Leisen’s repeated refrain ‘and not them…’ in the outré, is reminiscent of the sound of a car speeding away from the crime scene. If you could make one criticism of this disc, it is that a few of the tracks are skippable. While ‘Wild Horses’ is riddled with over-used rock ‘n’ roll cliché, -since it barely troubles the two minute and half minute mark- it seems like an afterthought, though it would be churlish to suggest that this tarnishes what is essentially a fine record.
Baby Baby Baby is a magisterial long player; with its vocals laid bare, poetic lyrics and cogent instrumentation, the album is testament to a group of hitherto musical nomads that have found comfort in each other. Take this baby for a spin: you will not remain unmoved.
[Rating: 4]
