It would be interesting to know how large of a role the parents of the members of Chicago band Brigitte Calls Me Baby played in shaping the band’s sound. Sure, TikTok, Spotify, and radio (both terrestrial and satellite, but mostly the latter these days, sigh) shaped them as they grew up, but Mom and Dad had to play a part as well. How else do you have a band in the mid-2020s that sounds like, as this writer’s clever wife put it, Roy Orbison fronting the Smiths? That doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
Which makes an album like the band’s sophomore effort Irreversible such a wonderful anomaly, a gift from another, better timeline. Brigitte Calls Me Baby plays a kind of indie rock that has largely been an abandoned amusement park since the early 2010s, but their influences predate those noughties bands by 20 to 25 years. It’s a combination so perfect that it borders on cynical, but there is nothing cynical about this band or this album.
The production, by Rothman brothers Lawrence and Yves, positively glistens. Sticking with the Smiths as a comparison, this album is the band’s equivalent of switching from John Peel to John Porter, and every album they make going forward should sound this clean. Bassist Devin Wessels features much more prominently this time around, which makes sense considering they were listening to a lot of New Order before they entered the studio.
Interestingly, the band took this nod of inspiration and did two wildly different things with it. New Order has been called the ultimate example of man vs. machine, and lead single “Slumber Party” exemplifies the ‘Man’ part, an up-tempo rocker that recalls not just New Order (the bass line) but also Bloc Party (the drums), while “These Acts of Which We’re Designed” showcases the ‘Machine’ element, with bassist Wessels and drummer Jeremy Benshish opting for a synth bass line and drum machine to deliver one of the album’s most interesting tracks.
This is not to say that the Smiths no longer serve as a muse to the band. Opening track “There Always” has a none-more-Smiths chorus both vocally and lyrically, as singer Wes Leavins uses his lower range to croon, “But the one you really love / Won’t always be the one that loves you / And the one that truly loves you / Won’t always be the one that you love.” And then, for funsies, he repeats ‘You love’ a few times, just like Morrissey would have. For those jonesing for a Johnny Marr fix, “The Early Days of Love” shares DNA with “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others” with the minor keys and jangly guitars by the truckload.
And then there’s “I Danced with Another Love in My Dream,” where Wessels delivers a bass line that would make the late, great Andy Rourke beam with pride.
The album’s highlight, though, is arguably “I Can Take the Sun Out of the Sky,” a “Pumped Up Kicks”-riffing skyscraper of a song where Wessels once again is front and center.
If there’s a misstep on the album, it’s “Truth is Stranger Than Fiction,” where Leavins’ high note in the chorus feels like he’s making fun of himself. He’s not, obviously, but it’s a tad overblown. Credit, though, for following up the title in the chorus with “And I said I don’t have five years left / That’s my prediction.” How bleak, especially in a song so bouncy.
Irreversible is the kind of period melding that would have been disastrous in the wrong hands, but Brigitte Calls Me Baby are not wrong-handed people. Their influences aren’t suits that they wear to see how they look in them; they get this at the cellular level. Thank heaven for that.
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