No Depression<\/i> once described Mouths Of Babes\u2014the duo of married singer-songwriters Ty Greenstein (formerly of Girlyman) and Ingrid Elizabeth (formerly of Coyote Grace)\u2014as \u201ca queer folk supergroup,\u201d and the results here suggest they were on target. On their second full-length release, Greenstein\u2019s hooky, upbeat folk-pop meshes beautifully and effortlessly with Elizabeth\u2019s more traditional singer-songwriter tunes, with the pair\u2019s luminous harmonies a highlight regardless of who wrote each track. <\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, in World Brand New<\/i> they\u2019ve constructed an honest-to-deity album with themes and flow and insight and a powerful message: it\u2019s up to us to create the world we want to live in. On opener \u201cWorld Brand New,\u201d Greenstein channels Come On Come On<\/i>-era Mary Chapin Carpenter, lively country-folk with writerly lyrics, an introspective yet upbeat celebration of domestic life. Elizabeth answers back with ukelele in hand, sharing her own warm, endearing vision of domesticity in \u201cI Do\u201d: \u201cWhen I look at you I hear \/ Wedding bell alarm clocks in my head \/ I wanna chase you around the bed \/ Spread my jam on your homemade bread.\u201d The message of both songs is simple as can be: this is what love looks and feels like.<\/p>\n
An undercurrent of melancholy emerges in Greenstein\u2019s \u201cOne For Me,\u201d a gorgeous, philosophical love ballad: \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know if we\u2019re souls and stardust, or just biology \/ Seems the one thing that I know is you\u2019re the one for me.\u201d Elizabeth counters with \u201cSet You Free,\u201d a dramatic ballad that swells with strings in the third minute, a mother wishing for a better world and a better life for her babies. The building sense of foreboding reaches its first crest with \u201cPictures Of You,\u201d Greenstein\u2019s interior monologue about a former friend who\u2019s ghosted her, with all its trapdoors of negative self-talk: \u201cAnd how do I answer the voice in my head \/ When it tells me I must have deserved what you said.\u201d <\/p>\n
The second half of the album opens in sharp contrast as Elizabeth\u2019s \u201cJubilee\u201d again channels Mary Chapin Carpenter\u2014this time the jubilant Cajun zydeco accordion-violin explosion of \u201cDown At The Twist And Shout.\u201d Returning to core concerns, Greenstein\u2019s \u201cExcept For The Love\u201d delivers a love song for the ages, a gorgeous salute to her grandparents\u2019 74-year marriage. <\/p>\n
The duo\u2019s sense of playfulness surfaces again with Elizabeth\u2019s randy, flirty \u201cSummertime,\u201d a classicist country-folk anthem that name-checks Patsy Cline while updating her vision of romance: \u201cAnd thank God \/ That boys like her like the girls like me.\u201d Flipping the lens from micro (their relationship) to macro (the society they live in), Greenstein\u2019s \u201cMy Country\u201d is a heartfelt, deeply patriotic lament for the regression and oppression represented by the Trump years, building to this final, cautiously optimistic note: \u201cAin\u2019t it worth one last shot to be \/ The land of the free?\u201d <\/p>\n
Rather than use their own words to answer all the questions they\u2019ve raised, Greenstein and Elizabeth turn to the great Holly Near to close things out, delivering a magnificent gospel cover of her anthem \u201cI Will Follow\u201d: \u201cI am open and I am willing \/ To be hopeless would seem so strange \/ It dishonors those who go before us \/ So lift me up to the light of change.\u201d It\u2019s a powerhouse finish that caps off this album\u2019s journey beautifully.<\/p>\n
World Brand New<\/i> is a heartfelt and consistently tuneful and engaging album that\u2019s as honest and genuine in sharing its creators\u2019 concerns with the world as any I\u2019ve heard this year. We can only hope there\u2019s more to come from Mouths Of Babes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":35069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10993],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-46946","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-mouths-of-babes","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46946","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46946"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}