Baby Dee
Reaching your thirties can have strange affects on your music taste. Some people give up seeking out new music altogther. Some people were born fairly conservative anyway and it makes no difference. Some stay interested in music but seem to move towards a safer middle ground. However, while I increasingly find some magazines getting safer, or too focused on the past, reading The Wire magazine has introduced me to artists I might never have heard, unless stumbling across them in the blogosphere by chance.
One of these is Brooklyn’s Religious Knives. This four piece take noise and drone and make a sound like psychedelic dervishes (I’m guessing here, but…). I hear echoes of Nico and The Doors, but I also hear something fresh. This is music that pushes the boundaries, taking the listener someplace else, and I sense they never stand still in any sense.
Meanwhile, Baby Dee has one of the most astounding voices I have ever heard, think Jeff Buckley, think Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons. Currently on a European tour that, alas, doesn’t take in Scotland, this fifty-something from Ohio, who was once apparently the musical director for a Catholic Church in the Bronx before becoming a hermaphrodite in the circus at Coney Island (if iTunes is to be believed). Some stuff just has to be heard to be believed, and this is what this aging indie kid requires.
Religious Knives -‘The Streets.’ mp3
Religious Knives -‘Luck.’ mp3
Baby Dee -‘Safe Inside The Day.’ mp3