Maybe you've already got your mind made up about the Babies. This side project of two of Brooklyn lo-fi's marquee acts finds Woods bassist Kevin Morby trading songwriting duties and vocals with chief Vivian Girls songwriter Cassie Ramone, whose fast-and-loose way with pitch is a source of contention in the indie rock world. Morby's Woods are a bit of a litmus test themselves, their spindly, bedhead country-folk too mellow and unfinished-sounding for some. The Babies recorded their self-titled debut at Brooklyn's Rear House with Woods' Jarvis Taveniere, and the backroom vibe present on most of his productions turns up here as well. Point being, the temptation to put The Babies together in your mind before you've even heard it can overwhelm any reservation of judgment.
The reality, it turns out, is often more interesting than the sum of its parts. Heard here, Morby's ramshackle country-folk sounds like Woods on a good night's sleep and a pot of strong coffee, running dirtier and kicking a whole lot harder. Morby's voice carries a slight twang and a frequently pronounced derangement, while Ramone-- when she's not left to sing these songs alone-- puts in a showing that might not change any minds, but does hint at where her strengths lie. At its best, The Babies conjures not the shrugged-off ease of either principal's better-known gigs, but the odd-couple white lightning of Johnny and June, Frank and Kim, or John and Exene, run through a K Records filter. Unusual as it is, Ramone knows how to make her voice work for her-- see "Tell the World" from Vivian Girls' debut-- and here, when she and Morby crash into one of their delirious top-heavy harmonic pile-ups, the result is dizzying.
Take "Breakin' the Law", an outlaw's honeymoon trip with a hook so worn-in you'd think it was a cover. Ramone deadpans while Morby fills in the melody. "Meet Me in the City" taps the pure ripchord energy and guy-gal vocal multiplication of Wild Gift-era X, while closer "Caroline" ends with a shout-along only a bit less rousing than the similarly-named Neil Diamond tune. Their voices, each a bit spiky apart, line up together with an eerie beauty, like they’ve been singing together far longer than they have, and the tunes they attach to their back-and-forth tend to be the Babies' most infectious.
It's when Morby and Ramone put a little space between them that The Babies falters. Morby's breezy, Ramone-less tunes tend to downshift somewhere between Pavement and the first couple of Frank Black and the Catholics LPs; he's got a nice and easy way with hooks and a smart aversion to overcomplication, but his punker "Personality" only has so much, and the jerky "Sunset" feels stale. Ramone solo doesn't fare quite as well. "All Things Come to Pass" bobs along on a pleasant enough melody, one that she seems to take as a mere suggestion; her voice draws curlicues around the verses, sounding like she'd rather be doing almost anything but singing them. Yet she manages to swing around on the choruses, not exactly evincing perfect pitch but suggesting another take might have done the whole song some good. Her husky bit on "Voice Like Thunder" is equally nonchalant, and the bridge she sings on opener "Run Me Over" almost destroys the good will created by its grinning lead-in until Morby swoops in. But the dirgey, yearning "Wild 1 is a lost cause, as Ramone's vocal veers quickly into the painful.
What's ultimately frustrating about The Babies is how much potential is floating around in there, and how game they are to spike it. In throwing in his lot with Ramone, Morby's big songwriting debut is now tied up with all kinds of preconceived notions about his songwriting partner. And Ramone, who actually sounds as good or better here singing with Morby than she does with her breathy Vivian Girls compatriot Katy Goodman, does a number on the goodwill she builds up here with her maddeningly inconsistent performances. So they've made made a spotty but occasionally quite successful record, complicated considerably by Ramone's take-them-or-leave-them vocals, still the kind of thing only those with their minds already made up could truly love. You expected something else?
