Humour is the great masker, the great defender against reality – at least up until the point existence is in your face and you can’t hold it at bay any longer. There’s only so long you can laugh about something before the joke becomes all too real, hitting dangerously close to the funny bone. Newcastle musician Melanie Baker knows these limits all too well and on her debut album, Somebody Help Me, I’m Being Spontaneous!, we see her reckon with reality as the mask falls. The opening track “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!” turns into “HAHA!” a few tracks later, which feels like an apt signifier of the way she uses humour to mask the pain. A scream eventually becomes laughter – or is that the other way around?
The distinction between the two feels prevalent across the album. Baker isn’t afraid to get loud, and there are multiple instances across the album where she revels in cathartic noise, from the aforementioned opening track that quickly lives up to its name, to the 52 second rockout interlude “Cabin Fever”, to the penultimate track “Slugs”. These are moments of joy, but moments of release too, capturing a very human frustration. The album is a document of sorts for Baker’s own journey of self-reflection and self-identity, loosely tracking her journey of breaking free from a life that no longer matched her aspirations. “I’ve been sad for most the year / Quit two jobs, quit drinking beer / Grew tomatoes in the yard / Forgot to pick them, they went bad,” she details on “Sad Clown”, logging milestones missed and unmet. “I don’t wanna feel like this,” she repeats come the chorus, which serves as a mantra for the album.
Make no mistake: Somebody Help Me is kind of devastating at its core, but it’s also funny in a way that compliments the anguish. Baker’s sardonic delivery on “Why Would I Want To Be Just Like You?” is sharp and serrated like a bread knife as she rails against the rat race, while on “Real Life” (just before a little nod to the opening line of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”) she revels in bucking societal expectations (“It’s my birthday party and I’ll cry if I want to / It’s my fucking birthday party!”). There’s a generous helping of Courtney Barnett comparisons to be made across the album (both musically and lyrically) and a smidgen of Faye Webster too in her deadpan moments, but it’s no bad thing. Baker has enough of her own wry takes on the world to make it feel like she isn’t just copy-pasting from her peers.
The album’s most interesting moments might be those where Baker tries a different approach to mining the daily worry that plagues her mind. The second half of the album takes a dip in energy that feels both like a respite and a cavity of momentum. “City Strange” has the guitars dipped in psychedelia-tinged reverb as she looks about a changing cityscape. “Peel the paper back, it’s all the same,” she observes, which feels fitting; it’s still Baker through and through, but without the gusto the tracks before served up. The melancholic “Bye Bye, Loser Blues” strips things away further, an acoustic guitar and harmonica offering that feels like we have found her at the back of an empty bar, singing for herself more than any audience.
And that’s what Somebody Help Me is at its core: this is an album of self-inspiration, a reminder for Baker herself of the lows but also how to never lose sight of “the true joy, silliness and spontaneity that I know the world has to offer.” Rousing penultimate track “Slugs” not only has her screaming out into the world about no longer wanting to live in cognitive and physical squalor until her voice gets hoarse, but serves up a list of aspirations. “I wanna be big / I wanna be brave / I wanna grow old / I wanna feel safe…I wanna like my body / I wanna like my mind…I wanna be alone / I wanna be with you / I wanna go out / But I wanna stay home,” she tallies. It’s a distinctly human checklist, someone who wants it all, to be in and out, to be alone and in company. The humour stripped away, the longing and pain is there plain to see and cuts deep.
That the album title is a quote from Baker’s favourite film, The Truman Show, feels fitting too. Like at the end of the movie (spoiler alert), there’s a significant change as the titular character breaks free from the eyes of the world. Baker might not have the same kind of sudden upheaval of her life (I don’t think anyone will ever have an upheaval quite on par with Truman Burbank), but there’s still hope for the future. The album ends on an optimistic note: “You’ll Get Better” is another mantra for her, a send off for herself as she looks to the future. “You’ll be fine, you just need some more time,” she reminds herself. The mask of humour is gone, but Baker sounds intent on getting the last laugh further down the line.
