This is quite an unexpected comeback! Scotland’s BABY CHAOS, one of the best UK bands of the 90s to me, along with SUEDE, The MANIC STREET PREACHERS, THERAPY?, and The WILDHEARTS; one of the rare bands that released a second album (“Love Your Self Abuse”, 1996) as good as their debut “Safe Sex, Designer Drugs & The Death of Rock’n’Roll” (1994), are back with all the original members in, and none has a beard! It almost sounds to good to be true.
Although I enjoyed DECKARD (late 90s BABY CHAOS incarnation), the name change also meant a slight change of musical direction, with songs sometimes reminding of MUSE. On this new album, “The Whispering Of Giants”, and “Blackbirds” actually sound close to DECKARD, but most songs just sound as if there never was 19 years in between this new album and “Love Your Self Abuse.” BABY CHAOS hits hard from the start with an in-your-face “You Can’t Shut Us Up”, and Chris Gordon’s production perfectly fits the band as usual. Some of these songs can definitely stand next to the band’s best earlier work, just listen to “Have Faith In Yourself”, “Poison Ivy Girls”,”Out Of The Silence”, or “A Tingling On Your Bright Skin”, a brilliant power pop song full of melancholy.
BABY CHAOS‘ fabulous pop melodies and punk energy still mix together in “P P P Peaches”, or in “We Were Youth”, and the band’s taste for experimenting with noisy pop and heavy rock can be found in “Risk and Writhing” and in “Habibi.”
“Skulls, Skulls, Skulls, Show Me The Glory” makes me realize how much I’ve missed BABY CHAOS, and by chance, it is also the cure for it./Laurent C.
Veglam 