OK, I admit it. I’m not a huge fan of the alternative rock
\nsubgenre that for lack of a better word I’ll call “Little Girl
\nAngst” – female vocalists with breathy voices singing how weird
\nthey are, how bitter life is, and how miserable and vulnerable they
\nare.<\/p>\n
I’m not that big a fan of alternative rock to begin with, and
\nwhen you combine it with posturing angst I tend to just tune out.
\nHowever, if one likes that sort of thing, the Blake Babies Juliana
\nHatfield, John Strohm, and Freda Love are seminal influences in the
\nfield, with CDs like
\nEarwig<\/i> and
\nSunburn<\/i> being classics of the genre.<\/p>\n
Since the days of the Blake Babies, Hatfield has had a
\nsuccessful career with both the Lemonheads and on her own, and
\nStrohm and Love have had projects of their own. Now, ten years
\nlater, they decided to get back together and record a new CD of
\nmaterial, exploring the group’s past chemistry from a maturer
\nviewpoint.<\/p>\n
The question is: does
\nGod Bless The Blake Babies<\/i> manage to do this? The answer is,
\ndepends on how you look at it. Mostly, no. On the one hand, there
\nare a few tracks that are good. “Until I Almost Died” is an
\ninteresting look at how one moment can change how you look at life.
\n“Picture Perfect” is just a pretty good pop song, as is “What Did I
\nDo?”<\/p>\n
Then there’s where the music drowns in its own misery. “Brain
\nDamage” is just…well…bad, a call and response paean to avoiding
\nreality through drug abuse that proves Darwin was right. “When I
\nSee His Face” is a flat, dull, adolescent rock song, Christina
\nAguilera on heavy downers. “On” just drones like a bad bagpipe
\nplayer. None of these songs are badly recorded or performed – the
\nBlake Babies are all skilled musicians – but frankly SUM41’s “Fat
\nLip” summarizes this much adolescent angst in a much funnier and
\naccessible fashion.<\/p>\n
This CD says nothing new and does nothing unusual. If you like
\nthis genre of music, I suspect that
\nGod Bless<\/i> is the cat’s meow, the ne plus ultra, the Beatles
\ngetting back together or something of the sort. From the viewpoint
\nof a non-enthusiast, it’s a piece of music that has its moments
\nwhen it can rise above its own content of malaise, angst, and
\ntwentysomething drama queen follies. But they’re few and far
\nbetween. If this sort of thing is your cup of tea, then I suppose
\nmy advice is go right ahead. Otherwise, don’t waste your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":25870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6594],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-37076","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-blake-babies","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37076"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37076"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}