ALBUM REVIEW: Baby Strange – World Below

Baby Strange’s sound is encased within haunting melodies, syncopated guitar riffs, four to the floor drums, huge bass lines and it’s all blanketed under a cover of melancholy that pulls and tears on the listeners emotions.

If Ridley Scott made a film about the increasingly visible class divide, mental health crisis, the meteoric rise of food banks and the political chaos we find ourselves in, this would be the soundtrack. Equally dark and beautiful with pop melodies that sync with pure grit.

There’s a real cleverness about the contrast between these very modern themes and their throwback sound, a sparkier take on garage-flecked indie that proves wildly catchy.

The initial moody grooves of the title track blossom into a big, glistening chorus, while the breezy ‘Beating In Time’ flexes its muscles with a jaunty guitar line and a playful hook. There’s a real sense of eclecticism too: there is a subversive energy in the sloganeering choruses that recall anarchic ravers The KLF, who famously terrorised the 1992 Brit Awards. The distantly Depeche Mode-influenced ‘When It Calls’ brings a rippling guitar chorus into harmony with fuzzy verses, while the delicately controlled chaos of ‘I Feel So Cold But It’s Warm Outside’, on paper, could well sound like a whole different band, but somehow, they still feel like they belong on the same record. The Glaswegian trio have executed this one with style.

World Below is OUT NOW!