North Coast cosmic conduits Babe Rainbow are overjoyed to present their latest
peace offering, Today. Their 3 rd album in as many years, Today catches Babe
Rainbow at their laconic, luminous peak, curiously exploring their place in sonic
space while permaculturally rooted here on Planet Earth, to drifting, dazzling effect.
Sprouting from the high vibrational vortex that is Australia’s Eastern-most tip – Byron
Bay – the music of Babe Rainbow acts as an extension of the consciously living
community that has made the area so magnetic for decades. Assembling once again
at the Music Farm in the hinterland, Angus, Jack, Elliot and Louise reconvened post-
macadamia harvest with nothing prepared but the intention of making a
spontaneous, energetic record, off the cuff. Despite initial resistance by their patient
producer Sam Joseph (King Gizzard), the approach reaped fertile rewards. Borne of
fruit trees and honey mead, surfing and self-sufficiency, Today bristles with the life of
the region from whence it came.
Over a brisk two weeks the gently psychedelic and lightly jammy Today took shape.
Moving on from the more unabashedly referential territory of previous recordings to a
plot of land very much of their own, Today is vividly respectful of the past whilst
emphatically living in the present, a collection of sounds and sentiments from a place
between yesterday and tomorrow.
The songs that make up Today spin off in a fantail of directions on the Babe Rainbow
musical map. Morning Song simmers on mechanised samba rhythms and
stratospheric flute, a subtly energising balm for the AM part of the day, while
Something New uncurls with a Gainsbourg swagger, casually swinging easy listening
equally at home on the AM dial as it is on the FM. Coasting above the clouds on
keyboards and a soft-funk bassline, Funky I Like It is innocently seductive and
mesmerizingly effective soft pop, while Electrocuted sounds like the greatest afrobeat
gig that never was at the Billienudgel Pub, and The Wedge is a raft adrift on sleepy
seas, stolen vocal snippets snooping in and out of dreams as pensive piano chords
repeat and a bassline spirals into infinity.
After bouncing the sounds down through a desk that (supposedly) belonged to
AC/DC, Today was done. The most resplendently Babe Rainbow Babe Rainbow
record yet, Today is a positive rumination on the present, and a gauntlet of good
times. A sermon of daydreams and poesie, fantasy and found phrases that endlessly
echo with repeat listens, Babe Rainbow’s lilting, charming eco-pop is out of time just
enough to feel totally on time. Today is the day.