If you are still but a baby, and have ever baulked at the X-Factor saturated top 40 of the past ten years or so, sorrowfully expressing a desire to have grown up in the eighties and nineties, Cardiff’s Baby Queens might well be just what you’ve been searching for. And what’s more, they’ve done it in such a way that embraces the new as well as the retro, which means you DON’T have to run upstairs and don your mum’s old ‘Fame‘ style leggings and leotard after all. Oh no, these girls mean business; they are soulful, stylish and streetwise. If you meet anyone in a dark alley who claims they were NOT won over by the charm of Baby Queens, I suggest you run, fast, for I fear they simply “ain’t got no soul”, most likely having sold it for that gleaming blade you’ve just spotted in their back pocket. Surely only people with psychopathic tendencies will be those not dancing here.
The voices. Oh the voices. These are sometimes magnificent powerhouses, at other times angelic, but always, always heavenly. Not for nothing did The Guardian describe them as “En Vogue mixed by Massive Attack“. It’s a good shout, though you could feasibly throw in any number of girl bands from yesteryear and they would still stick – SWV, Cleopatra, TLC, even going all the way back to the days of Mary Jane Girls. What is great about Baby Queens though, is the instant appeal of tunes like opener ‘Tired Of Love‘ and the mesmerising, dreamy ‘By The River‘. Their songs are like precious newborns swathed in shawls in their adoring mother’s arms, an irresistible wave of emotion sweeping through the hearts of anyone who bears witness.
And the harmonies. Oh the harmonies! It’s enough to turn Brian Wilson an embarrassing shade of purple, knowing it is too late to compete with those perfectly intertwined honeyed tones. It is at the forefront of the appeal of Baby Queens and transforms many of the numbers here from merely pleasant background noise to majestic, deeply moving earworms that are just so easy to love. Some of them transport me back to the nineties, when I went on a sunshine filled mini-cruise in New Zealand’s Milford Sound. I’ve never felt so relaxed as I did that day. Baby Queens have just reminded me what that feeling is like, and I am eternally gratefully for that.
These songs are so smooth, and if you don’t start to hearing them at 2am in trendy London coffee bars, then somebody, somewhere, has made a very grave mistake. Compelling stuff.
Baby Queens is out now through Strangetown Records.
