Start Listening To: Baby Smith
Navigating the shadows of modern life, Baby Smith finds beauty in the bleak.
Baby Smith have travelled a long way to find the sound that feels most like themselves. The Australian duo, now based in Berlin, make guitar pop that pairs immediate melodies with an increasingly restless outlook, balancing hooks with songs that stare directly at loneliness, digital overload and the uneasy feeling that modern life is pulling people further apart. Their debut album, Lately, Love Is Dead, is their most ambitious statement yet, trading the bright-eyed energy of their earlier releases for something darker, more reflective and emotionally raw.
We caught up with Baby Smith to talk about the experiences that shaped the record, how Berlin changed their perspective, why limitations became a creative strength in the studio and whether love really is dead, or just waiting for people to rediscover it.
For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?
We are a duo from Australia living in Berlin. In its essence Baby Smith is a collaboration between two best friends. We love to create together, we understand exactly what each other is putting out there and we speak the same creative language. On a creative level we don’t have misunderstandings or disagreements really, which is pretty cool. But yeah, we just write pop songs and try to make them sound unique from each other and other music we hear. We want it to be authentic and enjoyable to us and that’s pretty much all we care about in regards to making music.
Lately, Love Is Dead feels like a much darker record than your earlier EPs. Was there a particular moment where you realised the album was heading in a different direction?
We definitely made a conscious decision to change things up in our writing for this album. We had some very intense experiences collectively and as individuals. There have been some very challenging times since the beginning of the writing process for the album until now. Our best friend was diagnosed with cancer, so that has changed a lot for us. It has had a huge impact on our writing both consciously and subconsciously. Also living far from our fam ilies (we only get to go back to Australia once every 2 or 3 years to visit them) creates an uneasy tension in our lives at times. When things go awry for them or when they go through struggles it affects us in a very unique way. We can feel a little useless and alienated sometimes because of this. There is also a sense of guilt we experience for having left. It’s a very complicated emotion because we know what we are doing is 100% right for us but we also feel somewhat guilty about it.
The title track paints a pretty bleak picture of modern life, touching on beauty standards, consumerism and isolation. What sparked that song specifically?
We live a lot of our life through screens these days, it seems unavoidable. It is very difficult to be an artist without using social media and it is very easy to fall into a trap of consuming content beyond what we intend to. It’s fed to us like we are cattle and it takes a lot of self control to not gobble it all up. We’re glutinous for content. A lot of what we see on these platforms feels like a conveyer belt of shit and we are just watching a stream of lying and crooked politicians, war, genocide, advertisements for products we don’t want or need, propaganda, advertisement and propaganda again. It can quickly become a vessel for brain rot and hate. We’re not saying switch off to all things, it’s important to be aware of the current state of the world but it’s definitely a cycle which we think makes us and a lot of people feel unhappy and helpless.
Another aspect of this is the way we value people online. As musicians and artists we are valued so often on how we look, how old we are, how many followers or listeners we have. Instead of just being valued on the art, people decide in an instant the value of a human or a musician by very superficial and kind of irrelevant metrics. Are they hot, are they popular, do they have enough “viral moments”? I think we just felt a little woozy and jaded from what we have become as a society. Governments are dropping bombs on civilians while we all scroll and consume. Some days it feels like we are losing our humanity and compassion for each other amongst all this and that’s pretty depressing!
You say on the track that "love may be dead right now". Do you genuinely believe that, or is it more a reflection of a particular period in your lives?
We were in a dark headspace when writing this for sure. As we wrote the song it felt a little hopeless. But it was more of a transitory moment of despair. We hope Love comes back in a big way, we don’t want to be defeatist, nihilistic or negative with our outlook. We are actually very optimistic people, but it’s hard to take in how fucked society is and we feel like we need to start making conscious efforts in our communities to be more in control of where we are heading both with our morality and with our values. People struggle to even imagine a future for themselves these days and that’s a huge problem, you can see how prevalent nostalgia is in our culture and we feel like most people are clinging to the past and imagining the same future for themselves their grandparents did. You can see it in the rise of the far right and how they constantly want to return to the past. Without hope and being able to see forward, fear and hatred often wins. We hope we can all take back control and stop accepting the reality in which we are presented. Maybe love will return when we stop valuing people based on how they look, stop judging people, stand up for the oppressed and value people over profit.
This album was made using a deliberately stripped-back setup with battered equipment and a glitching interface. Did those limitations end up helping shape the sound of the record?
Actually we only wrote it with the stripped back set up as we were in our apartment. However the answer to the question is the same none the less. It completely shaped the sound of the record in the end because the writing shaped the whole record arrangement. Usually our songs kind of just fall out and the demo ends up being pretty similar to the final arrangement. In the final recording we just try to embellish it a bit and make sure it's living up to our creative vision.
You both grew up on Australia's east coast before eventually meeting in Berlin. Do you think Baby Smith could have existed if you'd stayed in Australia?
No, definitely not. We met in Berlin so if we stayed in Australia we likely wouldn’t have met and we definitely wouldn’t be in a band. We’d be electricians or office workers. The freedom and acceptance people have of each other in Berlin was 100% necessary for us to expand and dare to play out our creative dreams in the way we do here. Although we didn’t know each other when we lived in Australia, we both shared the feeling of always being a bit uncomfortable and out of place there. The feeling to conform and live a conventional life is so strong, if we stayed in Australia we’re not sure we would have been brave enough to actually do what we truly wanted!
There's an interesting contrast between the warmth often associated with your upbringing and the colder, sharper atmosphere of this album. Did Berlin have a role in shaping that shift?
Most likely yes. Berlin can be a very bleak place at times. The winters go for what feels like 8 or 9 months. It is dark, cold and gruelling. Especially in winter it can be visually quite a confronting and harsh place. It was a hard shock and adjustment for us when we first moved here, but over time we have learned to appreciate the quiet time in winter. It can be a great time to settle in and get a lot of creative work and planning done because everyone is kind of hibernating.
Your songwriting process sounds quite complementary, with Ray approaching songs analytically and Saxon working more instinctively. Have there been moments where those approaches have completely clashed?
To be honest, no. It’s a bit ridiculous how in sync we are creatively. For sure there are many songs we don’t agree on, or parts of the song at least, but usually if there’s an idea on the table and one of us doesn’t like it, the other just accepts this like “yeah it's probably not that good then” or “If you don’t like it then it can’t be a Baby Smith song”. We are pretty unattached to initial ideas and once we see we’re both vibing with an idea that's when we both start to fall in love with it.
The album touches on fractured relationships, self-doubt and disillusionment with the digital world. Do you think those feelings are becoming more common, or have people always felt this way and we're just talking about it more?
Obviously it's hard to know exactly how people felt growing up before the digital age as we know it because we didn’t grow up and live in it. We imagine people still felt lonely or insecure but those feelings are definitely more prominent now. People are more “connected” than ever but it's all surface level, curated bullshit really. It feels like instead of speaking to each other and having deep communities and connections people are just yelling into a void and maybe a few people passively see it. Insecurity and fractured relationships can only be expected when we are living in a capitalist society that treats dating like a game and people are trained their whole lives to always crave, seek or buy the next thing. No wonder people struggle to feel comfortable committing to one person in a romantic sense. Love might be dead because capitalism killed it…
Songs like 'Adored', 'Golden' and 'Lately, Love Is Dead' all seem preoccupied with the idea of wanting more from life. Is that something you've personally wrestled with?
It's probably a thought that’s crossed most people's minds and at certain times in the past, also ours. In general we feel the current system is designed to keep people doing things they don’t really want to do, working and then consuming, so it seems a lot of people fantastise about having more in life. In general we try to live our life as much as possible in line with what we actually want and care about, which is creating art. Whatever sacrifices we have to make to do that (aka living a broke musician's life), we do it! So in general we feel we get a lot out of life because we live doing what we actually care about, that’s very important to us.
What do you love right now?
Burritos
What do you hate right now?
Violence
Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?
Abbey Road - We think it is timeless and don’t get bored of it when we put it on.
Also shout out to In Utero by Nirvana, That got me through some tough teen moments lol I still come back to it because the production on it is so raw that it feels like it hasn’t aged. It’s obviously got this 90s timestamp on it but the production choices could easily fool me - Saxon
When someone hears your music for the first time, what do you hope sticks with them?
We hope they find something interesting for themselves within it, people tell us they enjoy our music for so many different reasons and at the end of the day if we can give people anything through our music, we’re happy with that! So we hope they feel connection, enjoyment or just some kind of vibe.
