Sweet Baboo a.k.a Stephen Black formulated in the hills of North Wales some 10 or 11 years ago, initially as a way to impress girls and to waste Sundays. Locked inside his parents’ loft he would noodle and tinkle with his Casio keyboard, a 10 pound Tandy microphone, a little four track recorder and his father’s guitar. The culmination of this experimentation was the first two batches of Sweet Baboo songs. Firmly rooted in Welsh Psychedelic Pop (S.F.A, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci) and a love of his Parents records (Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash) the songs would be early inclinations of the music SB makes today – a love of the country strum, flashes of keyboard wizardry, sweet, if slightly off key, harmonies and songs about girls, putting heads in vases, drinking, and sleeping.
Sweet Baboo
Saw SB at Green Man. He played Sat solo, and Sunday with the band. On cracking form; his brand of self-deprecating and painfully poignant songs are infectious. Has a new (vinyl) album called “I’m a Dancer/ Songs about Sleeping. ” Despite the humour on first listen, these are melancholia at its best; Genius. Beware, you’ll be hooked.