baths - cerulean

I first heard about Baths on the wise and venerable idm list back in June, where someone posted a link to these Pitchfork TV videos which I subsequently reposted. Then I heard this mix he did for FACT Magazine and realized this was something I needed more of in my life, so I ordered the full album, Cerulean from the Anticon store.

When it arrived, I started listening to it. A lot. In the car over the Richmond Bridge, in the headphones at work, on the stereo at home with an… unsubtle amount of volume. I started picking favorites among the songs; I started proselytizing the music to my friends; now, in an attempt to coalesce all of this obsession into one place, I’m writing a bloggy-type review of it.

Before diving into individual track commentary, a few words on the overall mood. The beats are primarily glitchy hip-hop, the lyrics young and earnest, the tradition one of bedroom one-man-show “indietronic” auteurs like Caribou and Four Tet (more on whom in a moment). The defining sound of the album for me is an effect where the bass hits are close-to-instantanously crossfaded to-and-from the rest of the instrumentation. It makes a very distinctive throbbing thump, like the bass cannot co-exist with the other music: it will not be restrained. Wisely, not every track has this effect, so it avoids one-trick-pony status, but it’s pervasive enough to be notable.

Take a close listen to track 3, “Maximalist” for an exemplar:

The album opens up with a similar boom-bap track “Apologetic Shoulder Blades” which provides a gentle introduction to what Baths is all about: big beats, uplifting melodies, many, many, many layers of vocals, and delicate sonic detail that prevents the whole thing from being messy or bombastic. It comes in, states the point, then makes way for “Lovely Bloodflow”, a quieter number where a muted guitar line and clock tick-tock lay the foundation for a repeated vocal refrain: “rustle these leaves / ruffle these feathers”. Then “Maximalist”, which I already posted — I love the samples on this track. “It takes a lot of courage to go out there and really radiate your essence!” Indeed.

“♥” is next. Again, a short track — these are all brief, with not a single one longer than 4:50 — but the piano line is lovely, giving a hint of Will’s background as a classical pianist and that bassline thump propels the track through a tinkly bridge and sweet vocal harmonies.

“Aminals” is currently my favorite song on the album and really integrates everything on offer. Like my literary idol David Foster Wallace, I think irony poisons us and I love this track because it repudiates irony by risking “accusations of sentimality, of melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of Softness.” (Sorry for the background on that linked page by the way, holy shit my eyeballs hurt now). The guitar is straight out of Steve Vai’s whammy pedal playbook, the kids are playing without pretense, and the whole thing puts a giant smile on my face. Here’s the embed:

“Rafting Starlit Everglades” is a nice woozy instrumental track, and “Hall” follows it up with vocals - I don’t know that there’s much to dive into here, mostly at this point I want to put “Aminals” back on. “You’re My Excuse to Travel” has a wild falsetto vocal, almost Wolf Parade-esque, but I really like the instrumentation on it. The toy piano lead on this track and the tape-stop on “Hall” really put me in mind of “Rounds”-era Four Tet, when it felt like Kieran Hebdan was really stretching the possibilities of what could be done by playing his own instruments through the sampler, layering and re-slicing to create something completely new. I believe that in five to seven years or so, pop music will sound like Baths does today.

The album starts the wind-down with the beautiful, elegaic “Rain Smell”. “I still smell you, distance aside - still smell the rain, distance aside” over what is, if you listen closely, a very sophisticated piano line. “Indoorsy” brings back a propulsive beat and vast, echoey melody line in a very DNTEL/Postal Service vein. Love the track title too— “He’s the indoorsy type.” “Pleas” gets a lot of play, rightly so. It pulls together all of the elements I’ve mentioned on the album. Tons of guitar tracks, two overlapping rhythms, many many layers of vocals, a plaintive lyric, and a mood of optimism and possibility. Check out Will working the hell out of Ableton in this video from beta tv):

Cerulean’s closer, “Departure” is a soft ambient piece with a distant chorused guitar figure providing the main hook. Again, a short repeated lyric finishes out most of the track — “Smile for me if you care/ I want to have that in my head”. I don’t think the repetition detracts much but I do see it as a sign of a young songwriter. It’s nice enough though; a good track to fade off to sleep to and a fine way to close out the album.

Overall this album is fantastic stuff. Great attention to sound detail, an obviously present but not in-your-face musical virtuosity, and good thematic variety around the central ideas of hopefulness and honest emotion really cohere into a top-notch debut, all the more impressive when one considers the artist is just 21 and has (I hope) a long career of exploration and new ideas in front of him.