Total Babes is ‘that Cloud Nothings side project,’ which is both unfortunate and fortunate. Unfortunate because they deserve to be recognised as a young foursome with a lot to offer in their own right, but fortunate because in a time when we’re up to our eyes in bands making this kind of fuzzy, summery pop, this kind of association can make the difference between a band getting noticed and getting looked over – which would be a great shame in this case.
Going into this album you already know what to expect – sun-soaked, simplistic pop rock music. Just look at that front cover: it’s a dinosaur eating an ice cream! The opening second of fuzz gives you the first inkling of the recording quality of this album; lo-fi at its finest. The whole thing sounds as if it’s coming from a pair of headphones placed off to the side; the drums could be coming from cardboard boxes and the bass might as well not exist. This doesn’t sound appealing, but this recording quality places an emphasis on the guitar and vocal melodies, and the ones here are bright guiding lights on the helmets of earworms determined to get deep into your mind.
The sunny disposition of the melodies and the cover art slip off a bit when you start to listen to the lyrics (where there are lyrics and when they are discernable). Total Babes are great when they’re just singing about emotional engagement. On “How We Wanna Be,” singer Chris Brown earnestly describes how someone can “reach right through my skin and turn my heart to gelatin,” and his promises on “Be So True” seem so joyfully honest in this setting and his desire to “live inside your veins,” backed up by guitars both crunchy and squeaky quality on “Rot Away,” is too insistent to resist. Of course, like any angst-ridden album worth its salt there’s a dose of forlornness, coming here on the steady-paced, building rocker “Without Your Heart” – the only song not served up at break neck speed, but losing nothing in infectiousness.
But, Total Babes are best when they’re pissed off. “Someone To Blame”’s bile-ridden spewing confessional of disappointment is something to behold, and the clamorous centrepiece “Don’t Have To Run” is a damn fine pop punk song. Credit has to be given to the guitar work here, particularly on the latter, which is taught and exciting and drives an injection of adrenalin into an album that’s already bursting with vivacity. “Le Guts” combines both Total Babes’ punk demeanour of seemingly not-giving-a-fuck, and their creatively simplistic ways of declaring affection, which come together as the album’s highlight.
The first song that was offered up from Swimming Through Sunlight was “Like They Always Do,” and it opens proceedings here. On its own, this song is as much of a throwaway as any other MP3 you download on a daily basis that you listen to once and probably don’t even bother to delete because the miniscule amount of memory it takes up isn’t worth the effort. This opinion could easily be applied to the whole album, making it easy to dismiss. However, the relentless onslaught of infectious power pop head-bangers combines to make each song essential, and as a whole, Swimming Through Sunlight is much more than the sum of its parts. At under half-an-hour, you can listen to it without it becoming too taxing and taking up too much of your precious time. Or, another way to look at it is that you can listen to it twice inside an hour, which is certainly what we’d recommend.
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