Sweet Baboo is Stephen Black and is sometimes/always helped in no particular order by all these guys: Timothy Tate, Ceri Frost, Spencer McGarry, Rhodri Viney, Alex Williams, Steve Linehan, David Black, Mark Foley and all at Musicbox, Stacey Alford, Andy Black, Kirsten McTernan, Ryan Owen Charlie Francis and Donal Wheelan.
That’ll be most of the Cardiff indie music scene then. This album is a lesson in keeping things simple though. The songs are the stars and even though on repeated listens they reveal hidden depth and layers, the vocals and lyrics shine through.
This isn’t you standard Cardiff indie either (Stephen is originally from North Wales although I’m not sure any members of Cardiff bands are actually from Cardiff so that’s a bit redundant!); these songs have a base of folk, bluegrass and even gospel. The obvious comparisons are Hefner and The Wave Pictures but these bands tend to focus on the minutiae of everyday life whereas Sweet Baboo’s songs may have the boy-meets-girl-it-all-turns-to-shit-I-could-do-with-a-bit-of-luck theme running through them, and the lyrics are more whimsical and surreal.
Bonus points are handed out for getting the word ‘planogram’ into a song, for having a track called ‘How I’d Live My Life Aka The Bumblebee Song’ and for having the balls to include an instrumental (It’s Three, Let’s Go). Mentions of God, Demons, Jesus, Heaven and Hell punctuate the album but don’t sound out of place at all. I can’t imagine that Mr Black is a crazed religious maniac, more that years of listening to songs originating from the Deep South (USA, not Hampshire) have informed his lyrical style. Although I do like the idea of locals hanging out in Dempsey’s fighting internal battles between good and evil, hell, we’ve all been there on a Saturday night.
The overall theme is bittersweet but if this album could speak, it would say “you may’ve got two numbers on the lottery for the eighth successive week, the girl of your dreams is still shagging that dickhead that works in B&Q, you’ve had a raging hangover for three days and you support Newcastle United but you know what? Everything is going to be OK”.
Sweet Baboo is out and about this week, firstly at Spillers on Thursday 30th, followed by his album launch in Buffalo Bar. He follows that up on Sunday with a turn supporting Final Fantasy at The Gate in Roath. Go and see him, say hello, wave and buy his album because this is a little gem to treasure.
Fact: Sweet Baboo’s video budget has just been swapped, alongside Samuel Eto’o for Swedish beanpole striker Zlatan Ibrahimović, who will be relieving Rhodri Viney of musical saw duties on the next tour.
