5 out of 5

Label: Expert Work Records, The Ghost Is Clear Records, Mishap

Produced by: Jeremy RG Snyder

I love… every damn thing about this record. And I love that I didn’t have to think about that – to “earn” my appreciation after multiple listens; at the same time, I love the confidence that I’m not just letting myself be fooled by a catchy single, or some other surface element: Pretty Baby’s Layaway Plot is, from front to back, cover art to album production, everything I dig in music.

Even the background on this makes me happy: starting as a singer-songwriter concept project, both of those potentially cringey elements were dropped for the full band we hear, and even that went through some reformatting from EP to album. While I’m sure many bands have origin tales where they go through some evolutions, there’s something about this one where every piece sounds like it was swapped around that I dig, as though nothing felt right until it was actually right.

The final sound of Pretty Baby takes notes from different punk / rock disciplines I enjoy – from the mathy, emotive Dishord scene; to the spread out grunge-flecked hardcore of the Midwest; to some NY / Chicago post- / art-rock – and finds exactly the right balance such that Layaway Plot never tips too much into emo, or anything overly precious or calculated sounding, or too I’m-angry-all-the-time brash. The group flexes and folds between these sounds in waves, not trying to necessarily blend them together so much as find the right spots in songs, or between songs, to transition. The album is bookended with some blessed post-rock instrumentals, but tickle at hardcore, which gets unleashed in shorter bursts between some mathcore workouts. Lyrically, Rusty Colton matches this flexing, giving us succinct bursts of words to shout, or reams of carefully lain out images to sift through, written in a balance of both specific and generalized phrases such that you do need to sit and think about what’s said, but more how it applies, and not in an oblique “what could this mean?” way.

On the production / mixing front, Jeremy RG Snyder levels everything to, again, serve the genre mixing – the hardcore slaps; the math isn’t mushy; the post-rock glistens. And the additional flecks of synths and oddball percussion make my stomach drop: I (am overusing this word, but) love it when those “extras” are just slightly in the background, in a way where you wonder if you just heard something weird, and additional listens bring out the layer more and more.

The discordant red and black color ways; the full-bleed photography; the stream-of-consciousness font; even the album title – all of this is gold. And yeah, your definition of gold may vary from mine, but if you love 00s punk and hardcore from those DC / NY / Chicago / Midwest scenes, but find yourself picking and choosing how much of the defining traits of each you like, you owe it to yourself to check out Pretty Baby’s particular tuning of all those traits. At the very least, you’ll nod appreciatively at the skillful mash-up; but then maybe – and dare I say likely – you’ll realize this exact combination is otherwise an incredibly rare, and amazing, thing.