3 out of 5

Label: Hawthorne Street Records

Produced by: ?

Old Baby shuffles out of its side project shadow – being comprised of lots of Kentucky indie allstars – and stakes a claim for being the new folk-rocksters to watch with their debut EP, Misunderstanding Human Behavior.

Slicing off a bit of King Gizzard boogie and grounding it with some 90s alt-rock grit, the influences of Old Baby’s bandmates are clear – particularly Young Widows’ post-Jade Tree rootsy riffage – but the collective establishes their own groove, blanketed / guided by Jonathan Glen Wood’s warm, Red House Painters-like vocals. Lead track Skip A Beat swells while never quite breaking: a delicate balance that adds just enough edge to what otherwise might be a more mainstream My Morning Jacket “lite” folk-rock, and also gives the tune room to do some post rock starts and stops.

…This ends up being the highpoint, though. Not that the remaining tracks on Misunderstanding Human Behavior are lacking quality at all, just that they bring back that side project feel: a vague vibe; more stripped down and repositories of lyrics and jams. Final two-parter Train / Myth lands by dint of doing a quiet-to-loud build, but this is kind of a trick in a way – like quiet-to-loud always make an impression, especially in comparison.

Again, there’s really nothing bad on this EP, just that it starts so confidently that anything less than that has a hard time stacking up. But if you’re a fan of Young Widows’ more minimalist efforts like In and Out of Youth and Lightness, put a folksky singer front and center on that formula and you approximate Old Baby. That sounds pretty sweet, and for a brief moment it is, but there’s maybe another go-round needed before this group sounds truly like their own project and not a side gig.