Babe Rainbow
North Coast cosmic conduits Babe Rainbow are overjoyed to present their latest peace offering, “Today”. Their 3rd 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.
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