There are times when I get to wondering where all the protest singers have gone. It’s not like the world has become a better place or is it simply that we have all gone insane? Or is it that the world itself has just deep dived into the Prozac cuddle blanket? These questions – and more – aren’t actually answered by “Dream Babies” by Girobabies but there is no denying the intoxicating quality of all that they do.
Talking of tightropes, and I know we weren’t, but twelve songs into this album, I got to thinking that we are all walking on something that isn’t suitable to be walking on. “Dreams Are Mental” likewise sways between matters of internal conflict and a full on haunting by the disconnection that comes with the collapse of all that was accepted as normal by our mothers and fathers. This is all aligned with the square peg in a round hole philosophy beloved of sensitive singer songwriter of this time and place yet the Girobabies version of sensitivity seems driven more by Buckfast for breakfast and intellectually enhanced paranoia. Call it urban angst if you like but their version of angst has anger mixed with mistrust, corruption, privilege and transcendental uncertainty to therefore power this band’s music towards the Armageddon that old style punk bands believed was the sole result of Thatcherism.
Unlikely to be allowed to trouble the charts, "Dreams Are Mental" has a, somewhat brutal, poetic quality like the words of some prophet from a parallel universe who still thinks that putting it to music will make the world a better place. So, if Carlsberg made Glasgow, would it sound like these Girobabies? I think and hope that it would.