Babewatch

Oakland’s Babewatch are readying to release their debut album Wasted Time via Astro Lizard Records on cassette & Some Weird Sin Records on wax, presenting us with the following world premiere of a first listen. Rising fixtures of the west coast, Peter Kegler, Callum Beals, Chase Eiseman & Eli Lyons gift the world the promise of their new album that is the culmination of the hard work they have put in during these recent tough years in the Bay Area. Continuing Oakland’s undefeated streak of limitless proliferation, Babewatch are the band here to save your faith in the systems of DIY rock & roll as the East Bay quartet executes & unleashes an affectionate collection of quick witted chords & hooks from the shores of heaven. The band mythologies their own existence (with an album cover title typeset & layout that alludes to Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home LP) crystalizing their progressions, regressions, stories & swirls of sound like a future classic destined for greatness & grandeur.

Wasted Time wastes no time in hitting the ground running with world quaking track “Kelp Monster”—immediately followed by a tribute to an unfortunate friend on “Brian” that sings of his misadventures, incarceration & bad luck with a scuzzy & scrappy approach to balladry. “Darken my Door” busts out the big golden hooks that run at the speed of a revved up motor that drives deep into your psyche, with chords that continue ring & rattle the entirety of your consciousness. The exhausted yet still exhilarating “No Sleep” is the simply the greatest & most triumphant song that Weezer never wrote that could easily have found a home among the troves of 90s flannel-clad slackers. “Country Pavement” brings a rural & rustic approach to twangy-guitar garage, bringing out their wild glistening golden era steez on “Doc Holliday”, to the gnarly & gritty howl-along torn & frayed rock & roll aesthetic featured in full display on “Dog Days”. Babewatch ride audio surf waves on “Mel’s Garage”, advocate ideas of togetherness & super tight riffs on “Get It Together”, or a hymn for all the patriarchal dudes out there with “Single Dad”, over to the most-triumphant single along title track, leaving you with the insomniac hymn of “No Sleep” that makes this not only one of 2016’s best albums, but Babewatch themselves are one of the Bay Artist’s best local treasures. These songs showcase the talent from Babewatch that instinctively have a gift for creating connected chords that paints portraits of shear beauty that lingers & echoes in both the mind & heart for nearly an eternity. - Impose Magazine

It’s a hazy yet elating track, stripped of the usual jangly, upbeat surf rock sound that the band has become known for. The intro of the track and transitions into each verse open up for instantly catchy guitar parts, layered with echoing vocals, evoking a feeling reminiscent of the nostalgic and anthemic alt-rock classic “Where is My Mind” by The Pixies. Singer/guitarist Peter Kegler tells us that a common love for 90s music exists within the band, which includes the likes of Pavement, Silver Jews and Weezer, and although not deliberate influences, they may have played a part in developing the sound.

"It was one of the last songs written for the record. It’s about feeling a little disillusioned with parts of your life…those blues you get when you’ve been partying too much and not sleeping enough, and you kind of mull everything over,” says Kegler via email. It marks a shift from the previous EP, where the songs were made with less intention of recording a final product and more for the sake of playing shows and house parties in Santa Cruz. “I think getting out of college and moving to Oakland did affect the way we wrote the new stuff and developed as a band. We’ve been in a new environment and it’s changed the way we’ve approached playing and writing music.” - The Bait Shop

If you are like me and grew up in the 1990's with puberty, then you might have very easily confused the name of the show "Baywatch" with "Babewatch" and so whenever I see the name Babewatch for this cassette all I can think of are waves, sand, surfboards and those little red floating things the lifeguards carry to help people who are drowning. Oh yeah, and bright sunny skies. We've had a few sunny days here and already I'm taking it for granted by not pointing it out like I would have even a few short weeks ago.

That being said, the name Babewatch does seem fitting here as this has an underlying quality of surf rock throughout the CD. I have to go back to one of my favorite compilations here for a moment and think of "Music For Our Mother Ocean" which had songs by just so many great and amazing bands and in some ways I feel like even if Babewatch wasn't aiming for a surf theme on all of their songs, it still has that feeling of creating something to serve that general purpose (Much in the way a band such as No Doubt, for example, wasn't really about the ocean in my view but stepped it up for said compilation)

The songs can also come out with a steady influence of The Mr. T Experience, "That Thing You Do!" and The Replacements. Those bands do tend to mix sometimes, but not that often and never in this way. It's the harmonies of that dreamy fuzz laced punk that you know could be a thing if someone was only just doing it and then here comes Babewatch showing you how it can be done.

With this, of course, come the obligatory pieces of garage but then on Side B the songs seem to somehow take a turn for the punk (which still maintains that overall surf quality though) They remind me of some sort of early era Lookout! Records band with these background guitar riffs that could make the Vandals in their prime say, "Oh yeah, I'm stealing that!" It's those combinations of ooooohhhh's and aaahhhhh's, but yet when I'm normally taken to someone's random garage or a show such as you would find in the movie "That Thing You Do!", Babewatch continues to just make me think of the beach.

Now, if you were listening to music at the beach it could be in any number of ways. There is definite boom box beach music, but that's too confined for Babewatch. There is also that live band playing while the audience is in the sand type of deal but that's too much of a clambake for Babewatch. I feel like Babewatch has its own quality somehow, with a genre we just haven't seen yet. You have to imagine a band playing live at the X-Games and there are skateboards flying over their heads as they sing. Well, it'd be the same type of idea for Babewatch only with the beach instead of vert ramp. How you work out the symantics of the sand and electricity is beyond me, but I'm not here for the logistics I'm here to rock. - Raised By Gypsies