Baby Grand: Arts & Leisure

While listening to Baby Grand’s music, it can become difficult not to be reminded of other bands. All the distinguishing marks of twee are in place — the bright melodies, the airy vocals, the vintage-pop styling — and Baby Grand make the absolute most of it. There’s a song sung in French and most of the lyrics center around romanticism of some sort. Everything sounds bright and crisp, each instrument accentuating the melody. However, as is often the case with many bands playing the genre, the majority of these songs fail to really stick. All of the tracks are fine examples of structure, arrangement and songwriting, and they’re all enjoyable to listen to, but at some point you need to offer more. Baby Grand have started experimenting and that should help. What we’re left with here is just a pretty enjoyable record that will play out better on mixtapes than as an LP.