7th Level Music

JWords’ new single is, indeed, “LUSH.”

JWords —the project of Brooklyn-based producer Jennifer Hernandez—announces her new album, Sound Therapy, out May 8th and presents the lead single, “LUSH.” JWords is known for her production “nodding to both hip-hop’s brawny metronome and more uptempo electronic and dance influences” (Bandcamp). Her career is defined by collaborations, from her work with rapper maassai as the acclaimed duo H31R to her production on Nappy Nina’s 2021 record Double Down. Meanwhile, JWords has built a stylistically broad body of solo work, starting in 2020 with mixtape Sin Señal followed by a string of EPs that climaxed with Sonic Liberation. In the interim, she’s made major strides as a DJ, scoring a monthly residency at The Lot Radio and regularly hosting NTS shows.

Sound Therapy, the follow-up to her 2022 debut solo LP Self-Connection, deals with the troubles and triumphs JWords experienced over the last few years. It gets heavy at times, but the music she’s making now reflects her present circumstances. Instead of building a rollercoaster record based on the traumas of yesteryear, she opted for a confidently Zen approach: “It’s a new era,” she says. “A calmer, chiller, ‘Yeah, I got my shit together’ kind of era.”

Despite the fact that she began as an MC, Sound Therapy marks the first time JWords has been a lead vocalist on her own productions. On today’s single “Lush,” she repeats the phrases “I see me in you” and “I see you in me” over pillowy synths and a crinkly techno backbeat until her words become a mantra.

Listen to “LUSH” by JWords

Growing up Dominican-American in Union City, New Jersey, JWords was a sonic omnivore, devouring the hip-hop and R&B she heard on BET’s Rap City, the Jersey Club that took over the neighborhood, and the Latin music she heard at home. JWords’ music career has been ascendant since she first laid hands on a synth, but her personal life has been less steady, and she fell into a particularly deep rut in her late 20s. Sound Therapy looks back on those years with a sense of tranquility that’s absent in her earlier work. Her subject matter is still serious, but she addresses her trauma without fear or malice, acknowledging that it’s there without giving it the power to define her.

While Sound Therapy marks the first time JWords has been a lead vocalist, it’s her production that shines brightest. Opener “Lotus” contains the type of sparkling synthplay one might expect to find stowed away on a lost Dilla hard drive. “FELT” pummels you with a techno drum line but slowly morphs into a much chiller arrangement of synths. And “LoveCrime” presents an entrancing, oddly shaped structure that JWords somehow finds a way to rap over.

In the end, JWords is grateful for all of the experiences that have brought her to the present moment. She’s seen rock bottom now and never wants to return, but she learned some of life’s most essential lessons there. These days, she’s enjoying her hard-won serenity. She’s got a job teaching kids how to DJ and make electronic music. She’s learned to solder and has plans to create her own style of synth. She’s making her best music, transcending nominal genre boundaries in pursuit of brilliance. She’s calmer. She’s chiller. She’s got her shit together.

Pre-Order Sound Therapy

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[Thanks to Ahmad at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Review: Carbon Decoy – Crush the Sun

I’m intrigued with Carbon Decoy‘s name. It’s a play on “carbon decay,” the process used for carbon dating, and the skull on the cover of their new album, Crush the Sun, indicates a version of decay, but they chose “decoy.” Their name seems to indicate being a stand-in for the decayed, or for the dead perhaps.

I mean, the heavy doom riffs they play certainly help back this theory. “The Trip” opens the album with a gas pedal-stomper that makes you want to hit the open road, pick up a weird, sexy hitchhiker, fight a band of cultists, and discover a doctor’s bag full of loot at the end of the road. Earl Mudd‘s guitars on “Castle East” sometimes sound like they’re straining to hold back undead hordes attacking said castle, and the agonized wails from drummer / vocalist Casey Rowe amplifying the image.

Jared Jordan‘s bass is spread thick across “Icarus,” and Rowe’s drums reflect the surely panicked, euphoric, and then panicked again heartbeat of the doomed man who flew too close to the sun. The swagger and groove of “Forest of Lies” is outstanding. It’s a swampy, sludgy one amidst the doom, and I’m all for it. “Sirens” goes back into mythological lands (and waters, in this case) as Rowe bemoans that he’s being beckoned by physical and metaphorical monsters. Speaking of monsters, the trio hammers away on “The Wraith,” in which they apparently try to banish such a spirit with the power of crushing riffs and pounding beats. The album ends with “Ghost Town,” this time with Jordan on vocals and the sounds of wind blowing through a spaghetti western that takes place near a haunted coal mine that probably houses some sort of horrible creature of the souls of a hundred trapped miners.

For most of its runtime, Crush the Sun feels heavy enough to do just that. Carbon Decoy’s created one of the best doom albums of the year so far.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Ksu at Discipline PR.]

Review: The Fake Friends – Let’s Not Overthink This

The Fake Friends‘ new album, Let’s Not Overthink This, starts off with the cry of “No truce!” on “Ministry of Peace.” They’re coming to shake things up, kick down walls, and slap you out of it.

Matthew Savage sings / shouts through the opening track, calling out everyone addicted to constant stimulation (“You got your hand glued to a screen hoping that’ll give you meaning.”) as Felix Crawford-Legault and Luca Santilli‘s guitars roar all over the place. “Sucker Born Every Minute” echoes Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs-style rock with it’s hooky chorus, Bradley Cooper-Graham‘s bright, almost go-go synths, and Savage’s “shout them with us!” lyrics about people who can’t get out of their own damn way.

“The Way She Goes” seems to be about co-dependency, and the frantic, angular guitar chords reflect the fractured patterns in such a relationship (“You want it, I need it. I got it, you want it.”). “Control” follows this theme (“Don’t look so defeated. You only said what you mean. Too tired to keep fighting, it’s tearing us at the seams.”).

“Five Star Review” is a quirky, funny, possibly fictional tale of the history / takedown of the band told by friends and crew. “Living the Dream” is a rousing track, with great call-and-response vocals and heavy drumming from Michael Tomizzi. “Backstreet’s Back Pt. II” has this nervous tension to it that gets under your skin.

“HyperConnection” has Savage looking for something, anything, in common with a potential lover but “Your favorite books are way too long.” and “I’ll never get what you said to me. I can’t speak in astrology. What the fuck is a Capricorn?” Answer: “It’s a horse. It’s a horse!” On “If It Happens,” Savage admits that he’s doing the hard work to repair a relationship even though he knows it’s fruitless (“You know it won’t matter how much I do. It’s all in my head.”).

“Dance on My Grave” has perhaps Michael Kamps‘ funkiest bass groove on the entire record. It carries the whole song and will get you dancing, on graves or atop other things (tables, bars, desks, crosswalks, car hoods, etc.). The album ends with the simple, brutally funny “Good Friends,” in which the whole band sings about “friends” who are so miserable it’s exhausting (“I forget just how happy I can be when you’re not around.”). You have to wonder if the intended recipient of the song got the message.

The album’s title refers to not only the band’s creative process but also hides a Zen lesson. Alan Watts said, “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.” We often get stuck in our own heads, and The Fake Friends are here to snap us out of it by whacking us with the Zen stick that is this record.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Chad at No Rules PR!]

Review: L’Ira Del Baccano – The Praise of Folly

You know you’re in for an interesting experience with an album when looking at the cover makes you think, “Wait…Am I high?”

L’Ira Del Baccano‘s The Praise of Folly combines prog, stoner, desert, doom, psych, and whatever the hell is going on with the chicken woman, wasp-man, and nightmarish elephant-praying mantis hybrid playing instruments on the cover.

Part one of the title track instantly reminded me of Rush if they leaned heavier into their harder material. It’s a nearly thirteen-minute journey into cosmic realms that defy any kind of description. The guitars alternately soar and roar at the right times, and the drums are like guiding spirits through a strange land. It crawls / oozes into doom metal by the end and then shifts into desert rock for part two of the title track.

The weird synths of “Stigma”, and the chugging horror film guitars, remind me of Goblin tracks from the early 1980s. About halfway through the song, it becomes a grooving, rocking psych-rock track with tight drumming and a slick bass line.

The closing track, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” hits hard and wild at first and then turns into something you might hear ahead of Galactus’ approach to your planet.

L’Ira Del Baccano have said that they didn’t tweak The Praise of Folly much. They wanted it to draw in the listener and be as much like a live performance as possible. A good amount of it is improvised, which is damn impressive when you hear it. The album is an immersive experience that leaves you feeling like the album cover looks – weird, expanded, and spacey.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Angie and NRV Promotion.]

Review: Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor – Live in Europe 2025

Recorded during an extensive European tour in which they opened for The Dandy Warhols, Live in Europe 2025 by Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor is an excellent introduction to SOYSV’s live sound if you’ve never heard it. They continue to expand and reshape their psych-rock with every record and remain one of the best psych bands you’re, for some reason, still missing.

Starting with “Sweet Girl Insanity,” the album begins with droning synths and reverbed vocals that go on for over four minutes before unleashing a barrage of fuzzy sound at you – setting the trippy, roaring, and slightly spooky tone that will creep through the whole record. Sean Morrow‘s guitar on “Die Die Die” seems broadcast from another planet. The horror movie grindhouse grit of “Suck Upon the Living” is palpable in this live version.

“See You in the Mourning” is always sad and haunting, and the live version here at first drifts like incense smoke lit in memory of the band’s friend who’s the subject of the song. It bursts open like sunlight through a cloud around the two-minute mark, with Rick Sawoscinksi‘s beats creating a hypnotic groove for the rest of the track.

“Walk of Sobriety” starts the second half of the album, and it’s a wild ride. Eric Oppitz stirs up an anxious energy with his synth tones at the start before he and his bandmates kick in with a tight groove and Morrow sings for the back of the venue. The bright sound of “Crystal Cup” brings to mind 1970s soul jams and psych-era Motown sounds. Oppitz’s bass on “Night Crawler” is slick, again reminding me of soul grooves.

The album ends with one of their classics, “Black Mind,” which is always a heavy, wild, chaotic freak-out. This one is made even wilder with the inclusion / short cover of The Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and a bit of “She’s a Pariah” in it.

I’m glad SOYSV put this out there. We’ve needed a live album from them for a while, and I hope this isn’t the last one.

Keep your mind open.

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Ed O’Brien releases title track from upcoming new solo album – “Blue Morpho.”

Ed O’Brien announces Blue Morpho, his absorbing, second solo album and first under his own name, out May 22nd via his new label home, Transgressive, and releases the title track.

O’Brien likes to quote the Kentucky poet and farmer Wendell Berry: “To know the dark, go dark.” That philosophy became both compass and catalyst for Blue Morpho – a deeply personal album produced by Paul Epworth (Paul McCartney, Adele), born from one of the most challenging periods of his life. Though he remains one of rock music’s most lauded guitarists, Blue Morpho finds O’Brien beginning anew, finally starting to figure out his approach. With its moments of hypnotic psych-folk, radiant guitars, beguiling trip-hop and luminous stillness, it reveals an artist moving beyond familiar structures and feels like a map of O’Brien navigating exciting other ways to listen, work and live. He steps into the dark, and emerges renewed, evident on the stunning and uplifting “Blue Morpho,” inspired by the healing effects of nature.

Watch the Video for “Blue Morpho”

In April 2020, after releasing his solo debut, Earth, under his initials, O’Brien almost immediately regretted waiting nearly a decade to record those songs while balancing his schedule with Radiohead. Some of its impulses had been lost in the gap, and there was only so much he could do to support it as the world confronted catastrophe. Later that year, O’Brien entered the deepest depression of his life. Encouraged by his wife to sit in the fire of his emotions, he began a daily ritual, immersing himself in the breathing and cold-exposure teachings of Wim Hof, then retreating into his small London studio, playing guitar for hours until his brain began to fray.

There were no directions or preconceptions; O’Brien was simply using his instrument to navigate 50 years of emotional trauma and turmoil that had finally rushed to the surface. Years ago, when O’Brien began writing songs, Thom Yorke had told him a secret key to the craft was being a good librarian – cataloguing ideas when they happened to find and revisit later. As O’Brien played now through his past, his spiritual connection to nature in the Welsh countryside and his beliefs in the possibility of healing, he kept a record of what he was making. Over the next four years, those moments evolved into Blue Morpho, his first album fully detached from past regrets.

A series of serendipitous encounters steadily led to Blue Morpho. After a chance connection through their children’s school, producer Epworth became a key collaborator, leading to focused sessions alongside engineer Riley MacIntyre in Wales where the album’s foundations took shape. Saxophonist and composer Shabaka Hutchings contributed flutes following discussions at Glastonbury about frequency and natural resonance. And in Estonia, O’Brien bonded with composer Tõnu Kõrvits over their admiration for the classicist Arvo Pärt; Kõrvits then arranged strings performed by the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. The album was completed between O’Brien’s studio in Wales and The Church Studios in London, a 200-year-old former sacred space whose atmosphere mirrors the record’s spiritual undercurrent. Sequencing assistance came from Flood, known for his work with U2, PJ Harvey, and Nine Inch Nails, and Ben Baptie handled mixing.

An accompanying short film, Blue Morpho: The Three Act Play, which premiered at SXSW yesterday, will be released alongside the album, with more details to follow.

Blue Morpho is available on CD, cassette, LP, indies exclusive Transfiguration Edition LP (orange vinyl) and artist store exclusive Flutter By Edition LP (cream vinyl). A limited edition blue 7″ of the “Blue Morpho” single is available as part of the LP album bundle on the artist store while stocks last.

Watch the Trailer for Blue Morpho: The Three Act Play

Pre-Order Blue Morpho

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[Thanks to Jessica at Pitch Perfect PR.]

A Place to Bury Strangers ask “Where Are We Now” with their new, unearthed single.

New-York based band A Place To Bury Strangers release “Where Are We Now,” the third single/video from their new rarities album, Rare And Deadly, out April 3rd via Dedstrange. Following the “full-on sonic attack” (Consequence) of “Acid Rain,” on which “frontman Oliver Ackermann delivers deadpan, near-chanted lyrics about systemic cruelty,” (Consequence) “Where Are We Now” finds A Place To Bury Strangers reflecting on the past: “Where are we now // Is it too late // Should I reach out // Where we are now // caught in our lives //did our dreams fade.” Ackermann says the song is about “looking back at friends you lost touch with. Wondering where they ended up. Remembering when everything felt possible.” The accompanying video was put together by Ackermann with footage from the Library of Congress National Archives. Ackermann says he made the video because “I think we need to look at people more and see the value and wonder of life so we can be compassionate towards others.”

Stream “Where Are We Now”

Watch the “Where Are We Now” Video

Rare and Deadly cracks open a decade-long vault of raw nerve and sonic chaos from A Place To Bury Strangers. Spanning 2015–2025, this collection of demos, B-sides, abandoned experiments, and forgotten fragments reveals the band at their most unfiltered—caught between breakthrough ideas and beautiful mistakes. Pulled from Ackermann’s personal archive of late-night recordings, blown-out tapes, and half-finished sessions, here the interference is closer, the electricity more dangerous, the edges left jagged on purpose.

What makes Rare and Deadly truly unprecedented is that every format tells a different story. The CD, cassette, vinyl, and digital editions each feature their own unique tracklisting, a fractured release strategy that is almost unheard of. No single version contains the “complete” album. Instead, each format becomes its own window into the archive, revealing alternate paths, missing links, and parallel versions of the band’s inner life. It’s a deliberately unstable document: the album shifts depending on how you choose to hear it, mirroring the chaos of its creation.

Across these recordings, you can hear the evolution of Ackermann’s restless mind. Some pieces feel like prototypes for future chaos, seeds that later bloomed on studio albums. Others are dead ends—ideas too volatile, too strange, or too personal to ever fit the frame of a proper release. But together they form a secret history of the band, a parallel world of possibilities that existed just outside the spotlight. The tracks contain riffs mutated by malfunctioning pedals, songs born from gear pushed past its limits, or delicate melodies overwhelmed by walls of feedback until only their ghosts remain.

Rare and Deadly is less a compilation and more a documentary—an aural snapshot of how sound takes shape before it hardens into something finished. You hear the room, the accidents, the restless experimentation, the immediacy of a moment being captured before it disappears. It’s a reminder that A Place To Bury Strangers has always thrived in this in-between space: the tension between control and collapse, melody and noise, beauty and distortion.

Watch:

“Where Are We Now” video

“Acid Rain” video

“Everyone’s The Same” video

Rare And Deadly Tracklists Per Format

A Place To Bury Strangers Tour Dates:

Tue. April 7 – Hamburg, DE @ MS Stubnitz

Wed. April 8 – Leipzig, DE @ UT Connewitz

Thu. April 9 – Praha, CZ @ Futurum Music Bar

Fri. April 10 – Brno-město, CZ @ Kabinet múz

Sat. April 11 – Bratislava, SK @ PINK WHALE BAR

Sun. April 12 – Budapest, HU @ A38

Mon. April 13 – Belgrade, RS @ Karmakoma

Tue. April 14 – Sofia, BG @ Mixtape 5

Wed. April 15 – București, RO @ Control Club

Fri. April 17 – Thessaloniki, GR @ Eightball Club

Sat. April 18 – Athina, GR @ Gazarte

Mon. April 20 – Rome, IT @ Monk Club

Tue. April 21 – Florence, IT @ Ex Fila

Wed. April 22 – Bologna, IT @ Social Center TPO

Thu. April 23 – Milan, IT @ Santeria

Fri. April 24 – Zurich, CH @ Bogen F

Sun. April 26 – Brussels, BE @ Magasin 4

Mon. April 27 – Cologne, DE @ Gebäude 9

Wed. April 29 – Utrecht, NL @ De Helling

Thu. April 30 – Deventer, NL @ Burgerweeshuis

Fri. May 1 – Eindhoven, NL @ Fuzz Club Festival 2026

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Steven at Dedstrange PR.]

Noir Addiction serve up a slick new single with “Serve Me Some Crime.”

Alternative-industrial rockers Noir Addiction present their new single “Serve Me Some Crime”, a sarcastic manifesto about embracing chaos and contradiction, where rule-breaking, humor and non-conformity become tools of personal freedom. Presented with a smashing new video directed & edited by ‪Jack Lucas Laugeni, it celebrates choosing instinct and madness over routine, control, and the suffocating seriousness of everyday life. This is the first taste of the album “Pretty Things Don’t Last”, forthcoming via Berlin-based Soulpunx label.

Emerging with a raw, industrial-tinged soul, Noir Addiction is a powerhouse trio that harnesses a dark, heavy aesthetic against a backdrop of classic rock ’n’ roll grit. Founded by Sonny Lanegan, who handles vocals, guitars, synthesizers, and programming, the band is rounded out by drummer Roberto Catanzaro and Nessie Zorba on keyboards and percussion. A seasoned musician and producer, Lanegan’s creative vision was shaped by cutting his teeth in Los Angeles’s high-octane music scene, where he honed his experimental style as singer-songwriter for White Pulp and co-founder of The Dead Good.

“Serve Me Some Crime” started from a really simple feeling: sometimes life gets too serious. Too structured. Too polite. The word “crime” in the song isn’t literal it’s more about breaking small, invisible rules. It’s about those moments when you don’t want to behave exactly how you’re expected to. A regular Sunday can feel predictable, almost scripted, and the song plays with the idea of shaking that up adding a bit of danger, irony, or mischief to something ordinary,” says Sonny Lanegan.

“At its core, the song is about freedom not the peaceful, inspirational kind, but the messy kind. The kind where you allow yourself to be contradictory, to not have it all figured out, to embrace a bit of chaos instead of pretending you’re always in control. It’s me saying: if life insists on being absurd, I might as well play along.”

Based in Italy, Noir Addiction has electrifying their way onto the music scene through their clever mix of glamorously haunting atmosphere, sense of decadence, rebellion and obsession, Noir Addiction bring a high-voltage fusion of dark rock, grunge attitude and shock-rock energy. By fusing heavy, distorted guitars and electronic textures with theatrics and raw emotion, they offer an immersive experience that is meant to be felt just as much as it is heard.

“There’s a lot of contradiction in the lyrics on purpose. Lines like “I don’t need forgiveness right now” or “I wear the joke to fight” reflect that push and pull between being sincere and hiding behind humor. I think many of us do that… we joke when things get uncomfortable, we act cool instead of saying what we really feel. The song lives in that space. Writing it felt like letting myself misbehave creatively. I didn’t overthink it, I followed the impulses that felt a little reckless. The lyrics came out in bursts, almost like I was arguing with myself. There’s tension in the song because that’s how I felt: torn between wanting to stay composed and wanting to blow everything up,” says Sonny Lanegan.

“When we recorded it, I wanted that tension to stay alive. We didn’t polish away the edges. The vocals needed attitude something slightly provocative, almost teasing. I wanted the track to feel cool but restless at the same time, like there’s something simmering underneath. We played with that contrast between restraint and release, keeping it tight in some moments and then letting it loosen just enough to feel unpredictable. That balance is really what gives the song its character”.

Sonny Lanegan brings years of behind-the-scenes studio and production experience to Noir Addiction. Many of his songs have also been licensed to and featured in American TV shows, cementing his presence in mainstream media and propelling him into notable collaborations with artists and producers, which has sharpened his sound and pushed his creative vision to new heights.

Lanegan eventually reconnected with his old friend Nessie Zorba, former bandmate in PostHuman, with whom they toured Europe, rekindling their deep musical connection and passion for relentless intensity and depth and channelling this unfiltered energy into this new, heavier, darker project. Drummer Roberto Catanzaro then joined in, bringing a new dynamic layer to their presence, his powerful and heavy-weighted performance adding body, urgency and raw impact to their overall sound.

Soulpunx is an independent record label and media production house founded in 2017 by music producer and film composer Konstantin Dellos. Dedicated to the creation and promotion of high-quality audiovisual art, the label’s focus is modern rock and alternative music. Beyond music, Soulpunx produces short films, documentaries and music videos, always emphasizing powerful storytelling.
As of March 20, “Serve Me Some Crime” will be available across digital platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp. The full “Pretty Things Don’t Last” album will be released on July 16 via SoulPunx Records.

Noir Addiction will be touring in support of this EP, beginning with two special shows in Prague – at Subzero Prague on May 14 and at Chapeau Rouge on May 15.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Shauna at Shameless Promotion PR.]

Review: Mativetsky Amiri Pagé – Metamorphose

Take a tabla player (Shawn Mativetsky), a santur player (Amir Amiri), and a harpist (Sarah Pagé), put them in a studio, have them encourage each other with experimentation and love of traditional Sufi, Persian, Indian, and classical music, and what do you get? Metamorphose – one of the loveliest albums of the year.

Opening track “Yavaran” is the only one with lyrics and those are from the Sufi devotional prayer of Yavaran Masem (“My friends, I am drunk.”). Amiri and Pagé’s vocals blend perfectly with the intoxicating sounds all three produce.

The title track hums and pulses like a happy cat stretching in a sunbeam upon waking, or someone who has just had an enlightening experience. Amiri’s santur is beautiful on the track.

“Quarter Tone Suite” is eleven-and-a-half minutes of trance-inducing bliss. Pagé’s harp leads the way, ushering us from our tent in the desert and into an oasis that you don’t remember seeing when you set up the tent the previous night. “Maktrismos” blends Amiri’s santur and Pagé’s harp so well together that you often can’t tell which is which.

Remember that desert oasis from earlier? You’re back in it (or did you ever leave?) on the final track, “Pathos,” which encourages you to let go of what’s troubling you, have a seat, a cup of tea, and just let things happen for almost thirteen minutes.

Again, this is one of the lushest, loveliest records you’ll hear this year. Let it change you.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Nick at Riparian Media.]

Baby Smith releases title track from upcoming album “Lately, Love Is Dead.”

Australia-born, Berlin-based Baby Smith, made up of Ray Sonder and Saxon Gable, are set to release their debut album Lately, Love Is Dead on July 10th. Today, they are sharing the album’s title-track, laden with existential lyricism and an elegantly crafted arrangement.

On “Lately, Love Is Dead”, the band said “The song touches on idol worship and beauty standards. “I wanna be pretty, I wanna be sought after, I wanna be someone else, I wanna be somewhere else.” This comments on the way our capitalist society is built and how it constantly reinforces that we should always want more and we shouldn’t dare to be satisfied with who we are, how we look, where we are in our lives, or our circumstances. Everything is disposable, people are disposable, love is disposable. We honestly think love may be dead right now. The world is in such a dark place, and it’s pretty hard to bear. As people, we are becoming more isolated and individualised.”

“Lately, Love Is Dead” on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJalFtRd_TM
“Lately, Love Is Dead” on other streaming services: https://ffm.to/lately-love-is-dead

Alongside the single release, the band also created a mixer to give an insight into the arrangement of the song, which can be found here: https://babysmithmusic.com/pages/mixer-llid.

Ray Sonder and Saxon Gable grew up in sleepy beach towns on Australia’s east coast. Their parents were hippies and rockers. They were spoon fed Nirvana and The Beatles on the car stereo whether they liked it or not. Both self taught musicians, they began writing songs from an early age, evoking the quiet beaches of Byron Bay and the wild Gondwana Rainforest that were their back yards.

By university, they were writing hazy, sun-kissed demos to upload online and burn onto CDs for their friends. Inspired by technicolour, small-town beatniks and surfers, and the romantic soundtracks of their early youth, the foundations of Baby Smith were laid a long time ago. But neither Saxon nor Ray knew each other yet, despite likely crossing paths.

The pair each moved to Berlin from Sydney separately and within two weeks of each other to explore new subcultures and write songs. They met, and soon married, spiritually united by their affection for the whimsical, intimate, deeply melodic sounds of 1960s psychedelia and 1990s Grunge. What followed their creative union was musical exploration and experiments that led to the genesis of Baby Smith in 2023.

Since then, Ray and Saxon have had their foot firmly on the gas, writing, producing, and releasing EP I and EP II. However, there is stark contrast between their early music and their upcoming debut album ‘Lately, Love Is Dead’. Written entirely in their Berlin flat using a deliberately stripped-back home setup including dented microphones, a broken mic stand, and a glitching 12-year-old interface, the record trades the sun-kissed haze of their early releases for something darker, sharper and more immediate. The songwriting carries new weight; the production feels urgent and alive. It sounds like the duo have jumped into a whole new sonic universe, and it’s catchy as hell.

Thematically, the album wrestles with the human experience at close range: love and loss, self-doubt and self-loathing, fractured relationships, substance abuse within inner circles, and a simmering disillusionment with modern life and the digital status quo. What began without a fixed concept gradually revealed itself as a portrait of a specific, volatile period in their lives.

Their creative collaboration drives the project. Ray approaches writing with philosophical intention and precision; Saxon works instinctively, often guided by texture and feel. A devoted film enthusiast, Saxon drew visual inspiration for the album from Gummo by Harmony Korine, while the band’s wider artistic references stretch from André Courrèges to Suzanne Valadon and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Baby Smith have had a busy start to the project which has seen the duo sell out their debut London, Berlin and Dublin headlines, play across eight countries, and support King Hannah, Sarah Klang, Cousin Kula and Lo Moon. Baby Smith are set to hit the road again in 2026 with a UK & EU tour in support of ‘Lately, Love Is Dead’, which is set for release July 10th.

Keep your mind open.

[Lately, I want you to subscribe.]

[Thanks to Frankie at Stereo Sanctity.]