Babe - Volery Flighty

Mixing familiars can produce some exciting results, even if it can be a little predictable. Babe find a way around that, mostly by throwing so many familiar elements around at once, that it feels like a culmination of their last ten years’ listening material. A little Everything Everything there, a little Grizzly Bear here; it’s one brief flash of a reminder to another, but it sounds and feels like something Babe can call their own.

The Glasgow/Bordeaux group showcase a wide range of influences on ‘Volery Flighty’, but the focus is primarily on making breezy and buoyant off-kilter pop songs. Broadcasting influences so proudly can usually result in a stagnant display of fanaticism, but here it showcases a delightful appreciation of a wide variety of sounds. These flashes nestle in with the rest of the record, rarely seeming out of place. What Babe manage to accomplish, is a wonderfully pretty sound that oozes elegance.

From the Eraserhead-channelling finale ‘Bronco’, to the rolling ‘Grotto’, ‘Volery Flighty’ is remarkably expansive and consistently surprising. Lauren Mayberry of CHVRCHES even stops by for some gorgeous backing vocals on a few tracks. But all in all, how the record manages to come out as refreshing as it does, is almost a miracle. Gerard Black’s stunning vocals, and the rest of the group’s picturesque soundscapes, it’s just a consistently pleasant record.