Sweet Baboo - Ships

Love, hey? What can you say? Well, plenty apparently. People try to approach it from every angle. Getting underneath it. Picking it up, jiggling it around and having a go at uncovering its mysteries. Turning it around and around. Some have some wise words, others less so, but almost everyone believes they have something worthwhile to share.

Stephen Black, or if you go by his moniker Sweet Baboo, tries his best to provide a unique perspective. The second track on this, his third album ‘Ships’, is called ‘The Morse Code For Love Is Beep Beep, Beep Beep, The Binary Code Is One One’, which, as unwieldy as it sounds, is certainly something you won’t hear many other people saying this year.

‘Ships’ presents the classic indie dichotomy; Sweet Baboo is heartbroken. That seems pretty clear from listening to the lyrics. But the music makes you feel the opposite: its relentlessly upbeat feel is as though he’s only just fallen in love.

Black has officially released three albums in 12 years but he also splits his time playing for the likes of Cate Le Bon, Euros Childs, Slow Club, Daniel Johnston – and in a similar vein to those acts his songs are bursting with big-hearted affection and wry takes on the love lost and heartbreak.

‘Ships’ is a mélange of brass and giddy rhythm sections. It gets so helter-skelter at times it can feel a little too sweet (the cover artwork will give you a clue) but it’s clever enough to never go that far very often.

In parts exuberant and giddy, in parts dejected and heartbroken, this is a quintessentially British record – think the Kinks and Gorkys, think tender witticisms (sample lyrics: ‘your arms they feel like home to me’), think seaside waltzes.

The gentle and lilting lovelorn sway of ‘You Are A Wave’ and the jaunty stomp of ‘If I Died’ (featuring the line ‘Daniel Johnston has written hundreds of great tunes and I’ve only got six’) are infectiously catchy. And though tracks like ‘Twelve Carrots Of Love’ and ‘8 Bit Monsters’ get a little too twee – and make The Boy Least Likely To sound like Mastodon – overall this is a bruised but lovely journey through the mind of a talented songwriter.

First single ‘Let’s Go Swimming Wild’ is the high watermark of the album. It begins with a woozy beat and the melancholic atmospherics soundtrack Black trying his hardest to look on the bright side – ‘Out of mess sometimes comes great success.’ Lines like ‘the way you like to categorise my life into new and tidy piles’ hits at the heart of something real and insightful – and the brass-filled chorus won’t leave your head for days.

That’s what ‘Ships’ is there for. It’s a record to raise a smile and shed a tear to. A record to keep you company and let you know eveything’s (hopefully) going to be ok.