The music of transgendered performance artist, former sideshow entertainer and classically trained harpist Baby Dee is, admittedly, an acquired taste. Not everyone is ready for her shabbily graceful collection of (mostly) dusty torch songs. The heartrending pianos might be too nakedly emotional, the orchestral arrangements too unpolished and the vocals too unselfconsciously earnest and raw. But they are all truly beautiful.

Dee's third record (and first for Drag City) was produced by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Chavez's Matt Sweeney, and that duo adds a shambolic, spare indie rock spirit to these theatrical gems. To wit, "The Earlie King" sounds like a jaunty lost track from Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, and the airy aria "A Compass Of The Light" could be an emotive, baroque Antony And The Johnsons' song. There is also a gritty, Tom Waits-ish feel to many of these tales of the lonely, the outcast and the damaged. (See: "Fresh Out Of Candles.")

With a dream cast of collaborators from Andrew WK, who plays both bass and drums on eight of album's tracks, to Current 93 cellist John Contreras, Baby Dee has created a perfect intimate orchestra to flesh out her interpretive cabaret. Three of the last four tracks, in fact, need no words at all, leaving it to the weeping strings, spry recorders, continental accordions and classical pianos to deliver the emotional power in lieu of Dee's strangely evocative voice. Though most of her record seems destined to score boozy nights, smoky rooms or black-box theaters, its final instrumental troika is an example of poignant, at times Medieval-sounding, high art.

Tracklist For Safe Inside The Day:
01. Safe Inside The Day
02. The Earlie King
03. A Compass Of The Light
04. The Only Bones That Show
05. Fresh Out Of Candles
06. Big Titty Bee Girl (From Dino Town)
07. A Christmas Jig For A Three-Legged Cat
08. Flowers On The Tracks
09. The Dance Of Diminishing Possibilities
10. Bad Kidneys
11. You'll Find Your Footing

www.babydee.org

Save This Page

Digg This!