Baby Ray: Personalized (8 songs)
Noise Magazine, November, 1997
Audiodoodahday: Butch and Brenda
Five stars (excellent)
"Some solo tracks, and two full-band numbers, "Sorry" and "MFG," make up this offering. The opening salvo, "Feel the Hush," reminds me of a lot of different stuff without sounding like much of it: Noam Chomsky, Eno, Sparks, Philip Glass, and expecially XTC's early experimental recordings circa Go+. This could be the alpha dog music of a post-nuke wasteland, no doubt about it. Part thinking-man's electronics, part post-"Tomorrow Never Knows" Beatles-influenced pop (as on "Superbitch"), Baby Ray is fast becoming one of my all-time favorite bands. "Sorry (I Am You Never Really Were)" seems to be the band's Potemkin Village bid for acceptability, soon to be released on a 7". It reminds me of Tull's Ian Anderson circa Benefit or This Was fronting Gingerbutkis, masters of avant jazz-rock excess. Why won't every radio station in the *&&**!ing world play this groundbreaking toe-tapper nonstop? Because it's dangerously perfect. Because stupid is smart. Because it would aid the cause of wierd revolution. Because it summons up the staring doom of last days, a delicious threat. Little Red Caboose is kinda like Syd taken at the hyper pace of Phil Ochs in one of his more manic outings, a la "Pretty Smart on My Part," except as produced by Todd Rundgren while taking a break from twirling the knobs for XTC's Skylarking sessions. The other real standout track, MFG is the best Syd clone since, erm, "Old Pervert" by The Soft Boys. The coda chorus of "She's my *&&**!ing girl" is priceless. What have we done in our misbegotten lives that was so good that we should deserve such greatness? "Psychosomatic" is pretty relentless in a similar mode; "But I Chipped Cold Air is a purty (but overlong) ballad in the mode of XTC circa Mummer (see also "Wonderland"). The random nitty gritty nuttiness of "Stupor-Soothing Blues" is a welcome change of pace from what has come before, but it's also a tour-de-force grand finale of sorts which recapitulates the best aspects of Baby Ray--witty use of multitracking, an almost scientific positioning of strategic noise modules, a fascination with rhythm qua rhythm, and, most of all, a devil-may-care artsy goofiness which sometimes translates to...genius? I strangely suspect it's too soon to say, but there's no denying that on many levels there's something quite compelling going on here. In a very short period of time, Baby Ray has proven themselves the band to surpass in the 90's. Pick hits: "Sorry," "MFG," "Feel the Hush," "The Superbitch." My pick for tape of the month for November, oh yaas in-deedy.