Two sunny Australians move to Berlin and make an album called Lately, Love Is Dead. We’ve been joking that the city got to them, and after spending some time with the lyrics, we have a few questions. Mostly about how they’ve made mistrust, self-doubt and the fear of everything going wrong sound so lovely that we keep putting it all on again.
Baby Smith are Ray Sonder and Saxon Gable, and their combined voice has a particular pull that’s difficult to escape. There’s something eerie and beautiful about the way they sing together, deliberately matching pitch and tone until the two voices become difficult to separate.
This is one of those records that gets us excited about what pop can do, with melodies that have us immediately and songs that keep opening up the longer we spend with them. We’ll be following a synth lead, happily enjoying ourselves, when the lyrics sink in and we’re like: fuck. Maybe things weren’t going quite as well as the flute suggested.
“Adored” gives us that feeling early on. We hear someone drawing the line, recognizing that the relationship is over and that it’s time to move. There’s hurt in the realization, but also some relief at having finally arrived there. The synth leads take a little weight off it, giving something fairly consequential a melody we’re already humming. And the drugs mentioned feel close to some Berlin friends’ mechanisms for getting past painful relationships. We recognize a few people here.
The city has a more complicated place in the band’s story than our opening theory allows. Speaking to Still Listening, they described finding the freedom in Berlin to pursue their creative lives, alongside the guilt and helplessness of being far from family when things go wrong. That makes sense to us. Moving somewhere that lets you become more yourself doesn’t necessarily make everything easier, and loving the life you’ve chosen doesn’t stop you missing the people elsewhere.
“Limoncello River” carries a particularly difficult collision of feelings. The band explained, in comments published by LOUD WOMEN, that it was partly inspired by a close friend facing serious health problems while becoming a father. They wanted the lyrics to convey the disorientation of those experiences happening together.
We had trouble hearing between the lines at first because the guitar, synth leads and flute are so beautifully tied together. There’s so much to enjoy in following them, particularly as the song builds towards its ending. Knowing where it came from makes that ending feel more cathartic. It was already a banger; now there’s something else pulling us back into it. How do you make music this pleasurable out of a situation that difficult? We’re still listening for the answer.
“Walkie Talkie” has us thinking of Tokyo Tea Room, with its synth melody and those dreamy, blended vocals. We loved it pretty much immediately, then sitting with the lyrics gave us a whole other song to explore. The duo have spoken about drawing on past relationships where someone’s words and behavior left them unsure what to trust. You can hear that uncertainty creeping in, but just as things get darker, the music picks back up and we’re happily following again. Yes, we still love you for this song. Yes, we may also run for cover.
The synth lead and flute on “Golden” take us somewhere near the space garden we found in Mandrake Handshake’s Earth-Sized Worlds. We could stay there for quite a while, although there’s a familiar uneasiness in this particular patch: anticipating the end of happiness while you’re still experiencing it. A lovely moment, already being worried about. We know the feeling, unfortunately?
“All I Do” brings the piano forward and gives us another little change in how close the singing feels. There’s some Rhye in them, particularly “The Fall”, and we might be wrong, but we hear a more individual voice stepping out before that combined sound returns in the chorus. It’s lovely, and once again we’re trying to properly sink into the words while the melody keeps distracting us. By this point, we’ve been going a little crazy over the album. Could you tell?
“Take It Or Leave It” certainly hasn’t helped. Those beautifully swung drums stay perfectly in the pocket while the arpeggiated piano chords lead into one of the most satisfying instrumental choruses on the record. And they’re singing about fearing love in one of the catchiest ways we’ve heard in ages. We can imagine ourselves singing along quite happily before considering whether that’s a feeling we particularly want to encourage.
This is what keeps us coming back. Baby Smith give the musical enjoyment so much care that discovering the darker writing feels like getting to know a song better. We already want to hear it again. Then we realise there’s more to hear.
“Lately, Love Is Dead” is our favourite, and the song where everything we love about the album comes together. The synth pad builds an atmosphere we’re immediately happy to sit in, with a synth line moving around the vocal and some exceptionally tasty playing underneath. The arrangement leaves space for strings to appear and carry us towards our favorite chorus on the record. Good luck leaving it at one listen.
The band have connected the song to beauty standards and the pressure to keep wanting more: a different appearance, a different life, another version of yourself. That dissatisfaction feels painfully recognisable, and hearing it delivered through something so lovable makes us pay closer attention. We understand why it became the title track. It has the atmosphere, the instrumental turns, the chorus we keep wanting back, and words that become harder to brush past each time around.
There’s something particularly moving, then, about discovering that “Don’t Look Down” has helped the band themselves. Ray told Northern Transmissions that they wrote it when “we felt a lot of self-doubt, and we were thinking that maybe we should quit.” Listening back has since encouraged them to continue. We’re very glad they did. We’ve become rather invested in hearing what they make next.
Especially when “Have I Lost Myself Or Sense Of Melody” follows and we can already see ourselves clapping along with the snare while the singing contemplates falling to its death. It’s a slightly dystopian picture of a lovely night out, but the song is so tasty that we know we’ll be joining in. They keep finding these moments of musical enjoyment in places we wouldn’t necessarily think to look.
“Goodnight Baby” closes it with a lullaby whose vocal melodies take our ears towards Imogen Heap territory. There’s such class and restraint in the delivery, and it’s exactly the ending we wanted. Just, fucking, yes. Those voices had us at the beginning, and hearing them send us off this gently mostly makes us want to start again.
This is a no-skip debut for us. We’re aware that our little corner of the internet declaring that comes with neither a trophy nor any particular authority, but we did just find ourselves talking about every song. We couldn’t bear to leave any of them out.
We’ll ask Baby Smith whether Berlin deserves any blame when we see them next week. For now, they’ve given us a record full of difficult feelings that we’re very happy to keep company with. Love might be having a rough time, but we’ll be singing along.
Listen where you listen:
