The most endearing of Adult Baby’s many endearing moments occurs in Guy Blackman’s lament of growing old, ‘At Their Age’, with the line: “Their skin so smooth, and their shiny hair/ And I wanna cry, or at least have sex with them”. Out of context it might appear wryly humorous, but Adult Baby is an utterly humourless record, one that constantly exudes the kind of vulnerability that enriches that couplet, so instead it has the heart-crushing quality of regret. Elsewhere Blackman is more hopeful, even exuberant in his own way, and the complicated presence of his lyrical persona endows his debut with a lot of charm, even a volume of bitter spunk. An example is ‘Carlton North’, where he sings a jaded melody about leaving Perth for Melbourne against a muscular backing of strings.
But on the whole, if it wasn’t for his bittersweet personality and willingness to return the gaze of his audience with his own frank stare, this would be a fragile and reed-thin record. Blackman’s sparse arrangements suit his subjects and his untrained voice, but they also preclude him from possessing some of the things that make the bands he sounds like – 69 Love Songs-era Magnetic Fields, early Belle and Sebastian – as powerful as they are vulnerable. But all this means is that on his first record Blackman doesn’t manage to knock the ball out of the park. It’s still a stable of sweet, subdued and fascinatingly honest pop songs.
Tracklist
1 Unsteady
2 Gayle
3 Dark & Quiet Place
4 Black Eyes
5 Act Like You Don't
6 Johnny
7 The Same Woman
8 At Their Age
9 Stay on the Beat
10 Mortified
11 Carlton North
12 I Still Think of You
http://www.myspace.com/guyblackman
http://www.mediafire.com/?mmkj3jyyooh
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