From the murky world of the London they come, fully suited in black, like some kind of pale, smog ridden versions of Johnny Cash. Only better. This is Baptiste’s debut release. Self-financed because no-one seemingly has half a brain at record companies, and self promoted.
And it rocks the big one. Sometimes in a VU way, sometimes in a Tindersticks way. But mostly in a very, very special way.
Opener, ‘You Know Everything’ takes up the frazzled blueprint and stretches it over four intense minutes.
And that’s one of the shorter tracks. Until you get to the brilliantly unrelenting ‘Give a Man Four Walls Long Enough and it is Possible For Him to Own the World’, which is basically an instrumental, with only hazy, intermittent vocals, but is all the better for it, and then the spooky ‘The Half-Light’, where vocalist Wayne whispers above a creeping guitar line. And so the album finds its balancing point in the middle with its two best tracks.
After hearing the first two Baptiste singles, ‘Nothing Shines Like a Dying Heart’ comes as something of a shock. It’s a much harder sounding record, and a lot darker. Hints of Joy Division are here and there, and it’s a tribute to whoever did it, that the production is neither tinny, nor overblown. Baptiste shine on.