I love seeing bands having fun making their music, and Baby Boys do that very clearly in their new single “Maggot Water” from their debut album, Threesome, out this Friday, March 12th via Grand Jury Music. Produced by multimedia artist Arts + Craft, and co-directed alongside Baby Boys’ Caleb Hinz, the delightfully zany video features a one-of-a-kind virtual performance inside a refrigerator by the band of producers/multi-instrumentalists Hinz, Jake Luppen, and Nathan Stocker. There may be some almost nudity. There is a lot of silliness, and it’s infectious.
The song (one of the first Baby Boys recorded together) was inspired by the state of a studio fridge when the band arrived to start recording: “BJ (Burton) had been gone for about three summer months and when we got there we realized the power had been out that whole time so the basement was completely molded and the fridge was thawed. As we were cleaning everything up Nathan opened the freezer to discover a hellish scene of rotten food and black water completely filled with maggots. Pretty inspiring.”
“We started the track by cramming 10 of Nathan’s song ideas for the sessions into that 8-second intro that exists,” Baby Boys added of the recording process. “Although he’s still bummed that we used his life’s work as a footnote, it opened the door for us to make a real barn burner about a mouldy fridge.”
Baby Boys are also set to host a virtual album release show Live at The Mall of America on March 25th. A full-length set shot on multiple cameras showcasing Threesome’s cutting edge sonics and Baby Boys’ playful, ‘Don’t let ‘em take your fun’ attitude, the stream will go live at 7pm ET/6pm CT on March 25th and is free with RSVP.
“Maggot Water” follows album singles “Desperado,” “Gone,” and December’s loosies “Cannonball” & “Duke & The Cash,” which collectively earned early praise and support from Spotify’s coveted playlists New Music Friday, All-New Indie, and Lorem, and also NPR Music (#NMF Spotify playlist), DIY, KCMP’s The Current, BBC Radio 1, and more. Threesome is available for pre-order/save at DSPs HERE.
Baby Boys is just the essence, then: a drama-free distillation of ideas. Luppen and Hinz handle nearly all of the programming, while Stocker is the main go-to for the analogue instruments (guitars, banjos, and keys), and Hinz then sculpts it all together. They trade vocal duties off the cuff and in the moment; all of them sharing one microphone, typically whoever’s able to spit out a melody idea or vocal part the fastest gets control. The result is genre-bending mischief-pop: an amalgamation of busted-up iPhone memos and nonlinear lyrics colliding with erratic sonic landscapes.
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