Baths: Your Sweet Swine

A Parallel Planets piece by Tomi Uysingco

Parallel Planets, in collaboration with Intastella Burst,
presents Baths in Your Sweet Swine

Story by Tomi Uysingco

Mentioned: sporadic weirdness, a weirder version of Anthony Hegarty, and Angelfire

* * *

“On the night of cake and kin

Where I took you by your skin

Indoors

A light spinning we performed

And outside, left you again to your wife

Through Victorian doorways”

                                     - Ironworks

No, that is not from an Arthurian novel or the 1800s or whatever. It's from a Baths song.

One night, when a couple of my friends and I were drinking rum on the rocks and smoking joints, this song kept on playing and it was great. We got in the car to grab a bite at around 2 in the morning while this song still kept on playing and it was more than great, it was damn near perfect.

Baths is the monicker of electronic musician Will Wiesenfeld, who looks like a cross between a thin Jonah Hill and Damien from Mean Girls. The BBC once compared him to Toro Y Moi while Paul Lester from The Guardian said Baths reminded him of “J Dilla playing around with the Pavement and Prince catalogues.” While his first album, the amazing Cerulean, might be indeed in debt to Dilla and all other sporadic weirdness – it should come to no surprise since its coming from a label like Anticon. But the sadness Cerulean only hinted at with tracks like Rain Smell and Palatial Disappointment gets blown off the hinges by the time Obsidian was released.

Obsidian is pretty much an avant-electropop jam of a record Ben Gibbard wished he wrote for The Postal Service but can't.

Obsidian is a sad record. Anyone who sings I am sweet swine and no man is ever mine is automatically a sad person, man. But what Obsidian also is, is a more mature and more focused album. The stuttering, off balanced beats of Cerulean are replaced with delicate pianos and straightforward production without losing the former album's experimentalism. It is in his song Compatible where you'll hear traces of the glitchy qualities of his old work, but even that song is more forward thinking than most.

We also find Wiesenfield transcending the producer tag by singing on the whole album, and its clear that his songwriting ability has grew leaps and bounds. He somehow reminds me of a weirder version of Anthony Hegarty. Singing it is not a matter of if you mean it, but it is only a matter of come and fuck me may sound crude if sang by someone else, but draped with Baths' masterful production and voice, it comes out dripping with so much bittersweetness one can't help but cry and sob. His voice may be a chore to some, but the undeniable fact is, its all his own.

(Side note: He uses Angelfire as his official website. It is genius.)

What's more important though is this: Baths is coming to play a show on March 6 and to say that I'm beyond excited to see Will work his magic on stage is an understatement, but I may not be able to make it since I have work – I'm stacking that cash and getting money, you see – and this makes me sadder than listening to Obsidian. Hipsters and their lovers would sway and swoon that night. It will be their own personal Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. And if it isn't, then what the hell is wrong with you? Baths might as well be the future of your relationship. Go to the show!

More from Baths bathsmusic.com facebook.com/bathsmusic flickr.com/bathsmusic