There is nothing more beautiful or contentious than family. Luckily, Los Angeles quintet Babes—comprised of siblings Aaron, Zach and Sarah Rayne Leigh, and their cousins Jeffrey Baird and Bryan Harris—have a lifetime of familial and musical togetherness to draw upon, and it oozes from every pore on their debut full-length.
The album’s first single, “I’ve Got A Reason To Keep On Living,” is rafter-packed with synth-pop twinkle and infectious melodicism, a skewed carnival carousel soundtrack as envisioned by a Beach Boys/’60s girl-groupchanneling Harry Nilsson, with his dark perspective on life and love perfectly intact; and the rest of the LP follows a similar arc, rising and falling with melancholy mood swings. Babes’ introductory eponymous 2014 EP exhibited a Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood baroque surf-pop vibe, but the band’s sound and its lyrical obsessions on Untitled (Five Tears) are even more expansive, contemporary and weirdly engaging, like the Flaming Lips responding to heartbreak with a Wilson Phillips marathon.
—Brian Baker
