2 out of 5

Label: self-released (digital)

Produced by: Kevin Ratterman (recorded and mastered by)

Old Baby began as a what felt like a side project of several Louisville, Kentucky rock luminaries, given a dash of singer-songwriter vibes from frontman Jonathan Glen Wood – whose vocals have some of the yearning flatness of Red House Painters’ Mark Kozelek, or Eleventh Dream Day’s Rick Rizzo – but moreso made their mark by playing into their pedigree of noise, combining rootsy folk with some raw, post-rock edges. Followup Love Hangover interestingly sanded off that edge to the betterment of the project: the album came across as much less of a one-off and more fully blended different elements into Old Baby’s own vibe, even if the singer-songwriter leanings were still some of the album’s weaker tracks. A couple years on, their (seemingly) last effort was the blandly titled ‘New Music,’ which really isn’t a bad outing by any means, but gets rated here in comparison to what came before: as the “new” stuff is very milquetoast, middle-of-the-road, giving in to some indulgences and becoming a dad rock variant of their previous sound, calling to mind more clearly My Morning Jacket’s digestible pop, or Cracker’s casual country. Some King Gizzard riffs haunt the periphery, but the band, here, has reverted back to a side project – a casual jam. Wood’s lyrics take a turn towards more spiritual mantras of sorts, and that works when it’s backed by some riffage, but when presented as the sole focus, it’s a little cringey – which makes the extra focus on the singer-songwriter stuff that gives it focus problematic.

This is the most stripped down Old Baby has been. We still land some pretty solid rockers – opener Someday; slow-burn Visions – but then you get the absolutely puzzling non-starter electronic / ambient ‘Hovering Toll’ slowing the album to a crawl, and a larger percentage of tracks that are pretty bare bones without having any real defining sound to hang their hat on, save echoes of the above mentioned groups. And to be fair, those bands can be great! And if Old Baby was on the tour circuit with them, and this material had been your first listen, I imagine the album would land better. So again – I acknowledge I’m rating this more based on my expectations from the preceding releases.

However, the sense that we’re not getting a group at full force still lingers.