Babewatch
Babewatch & #doge left, Peter Kegler, Eli Lyons, Callum Luís Beals & Chase Eiseman; press photo courtesy of the band.
Oakland’s Babewatch are readying to release their debut album Wasted Time via Astro Lizard Records on cassette & Some Weird Sin Records on wax, presenting us with the following world premiere of a first listen. Rising fixtures of the west coast, Peter Kegler, Callum Beals, Chase Eiseman & Eli Lyons gift the world the promise of their new album that is the culmination of the hard work they have put in during these recent tough years in the Bay Area. Continuing Oakland’s undefeated streak of limitless proliferation, Babewatch are the band here to save your faith in the systems of DIY rock & roll as the East Bay quartet executes & unleashes an affectionate collection of quick witted chords & hooks from the shores of heaven. The band mythologies their own existence (with an album cover title typeset & layout that alludes to Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home LP) crystalizing their progressions, regressions, stories & swirls of sound like a future classic destined for greatness & grandeur.
Wasted Time wastes no time in hitting the ground running with world quaking track “Kelp Monster”—immediately followed by a tribute to an unfortunate friend on “Brian” that sings of his misadventures, incarceration & bad luck with a scuzzy & scrappy approach to balladry. “Darken my Door” busts out the big golden hooks that run at the speed of a revved up motor that drives deep into your psyche, with chords that continue ring & rattle the entirety of your consciousness. The exhausted yet still exhilarating “No Sleep” is the simply the greatest & most triumphant song that Weezer never wrote that could easily have found a home among the troves of 90s flannel-clad slackers. “Country Pavement” brings a rural & rustic approach to twangy-guitar garage, bringing out their wild glistening golden era steez on “Doc Holliday”, to the gnarly & gritty howl-along torn & frayed rock & roll aesthetic featured in full display on “Dog Days”. Babewatch ride audio surf waves on “Mel’s Garage”, advocate ideas of togetherness & super tight riffs on “Get It Together”, or a hymn for all the patriarchal dudes out there with “Single Dad”, over to the most-triumphant single along title track, leaving you with the insomniac hymn of “No Sleep” that makes this not only one of 2016’s best albums, but Babewatch themselves are one of the Bay Artist’s best local treasures. These songs showcase the talent from Babewatch that instinctively have a gift for creating connected chords that paints portraits of shear beauty that lingers & echoes in both the mind & heart for nearly an eternity. Babewatch introduced us to their new album Wasted Time with the following exclusive insights:
Our new album, Wasted Time, is our first full length release. The album is being released on vinyl by Some Weird Sin Records in Texas and on Cassette by Astro Lizard Records in LA.
The new album is a lot different than our first EP. The first Babewatch release, Guys Hanging Out, was made up of songs we had played for a long time and had written while we were in school. They were created while we all still lived in Santa Cruz and captured the surf sound that we first started playing. When we moved to Oakland, the music we played changed and became more influenced by the post punk, garage, and psych bands we were playing with. The new album, Wasted Time, reflects these Oakland and Bay Area influences.
Wasted Time was written over a few months. Most of the songs were written specifically for this album so it was definitely more focused. We moved away from surf rock and drew from the sounds of Oakland and the bands we play with up here. We also recorded the album in LA with a friend. So we were making trips down south to record and it became a more serious push to create something. The album still has some surf at the core of some songs, but we think it reflects more of our post punk, garage, and psych influences. The album is 11 songs and It’s about a lot of stuff like being transformed into a dog, a little league basketball team in Indiana, a garage, our friends, a pool house, and a guy named Bong Rip Brian. Hope you enjoy it!
