4 out of 5

Label: Leather Daddy Bubble Bath Records

Produced by: ?

Within the Young Widows circle of bands is an Evan Patterson offshoot called Old Baby. …And maybe that’s the same Old Baby that appears on micro indie Leather Daddy Bubble Baby’s split tape, Old Breeders 666 – LDBB is Virginia based, Old Baby is Kentucky; the two Baby tracks here have a brallig rock style that’s not exactly OB’s Widows’ adjacent groove, but squint your ears and you could hear it, especially as some kind of Breather Resist evolution – but there are no credits on this thing, and no reference to it on the band’s Facebook at the time, and so… maybe not. Given that that Widows link was why I picked this up, I’m disappointed, right?

Hardly.

The majority of the work here is from sludgey noise rockers Lou Breeders and anarchic doom atmospheric act VALUES666, with Old Baby doing a couple short bursts in the middle. The Breeders’ work is a journey: it starts out as kind of moody instrumental post-rock, which makes the swerve into Hives-y bluster (although super lo-fi) kind of odd, and the further transformation into noise – lots of reverb and indiscernible vocals and vaguely riffy rock – also hard to parse, but there’s a theme of momentum that ties it altogether, with repeat listens proving this to be some really strong material.

VALUES666’s slow and itchy atmospherics are in a similar, somewhat unidentifiable vein at first, existing on the edge of more defined “music,” but here, again, the set wins over: the denseness, and the variation within each song, while also embodying distinct moods, is further evidence of how much amazing, better-than-the-bands-you-know music is out there.

The Old Baby stuff is good too! It just rocks a bit more traditionally, kinda punky; the reason I bought the cassette turns out to be the least compelling music on display, but it’s by no means a disappointment given the whole package.