Adult Baby, by Guy Blackman

Adult Baby

by Guy Blackman

supported by

lawrence english This record is a master stroke from a songwriter who opens special views on the everyday. Solid gold!

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Streaming + Download

Pre-order of Adult Baby. You get 16 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

Purchasable with gift card

releases September 6, 2024

$13 AUD or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Original 2008 CD - ships out now!

Includes digital pre-order of Adult Baby. You get 16 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

digital album releases September 6, 2024

item ships out on or around April 18, 2024

Purchasable with gift card

$15 AUD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
black vinyl LP with printed inner sleeve. Will ship around 6 Sep 2024.
UK/Europe customers please support the Pop Superette pre-order campaign here
fr.ulule.com/album-adultbaby

Includes digital pre-order of Adult Baby. You get 16 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

digital album releases September 6, 2024

item ships out within 7 days

Purchasable with gift card

$35 AUD or more

1.	Unsteady 02:37	buy track
2.	Gayle 04:22	buy track
3.	Dark & Quiet Place (with Jens Lekman) 02:35	buy track
4.	Black Eyes 02:04	buy track
5.	Act Like You Don't 02:30	buy track
6.	Johnny 03:22	buy track
7.	The Same Woman 02:11	buy track
8.	At Their Age 01:37	buy track
9.	Stay On the Beat 01:55	buy track
10.	Mortified 02:34	buy track
11.	Carlton North 02:30	buy track
12.	I Still Think Of You 02:00	buy track
13.	World Of Bees 02:39	buy track
14.	Forever (Our Song) 02:27	buy track
15.	Older 03:01	buy track
16.	Echoes 03:21	buy track
17.	Gayle (2002 Demo)
18.	Unsteady (2007 version)
19.	Six Feet Down (Album Demo)

about

UK/Europe vinyl customers please support the Pop Superette pre-order campaign here:
www.ulule.com/album-adultbaby/

Chapter Music and French label Pop Superette present the first ever vinyl reissue of 2008 album Adult Baby, originally released on CD by Unstable Ape Records. Vinyl features a bonus track of 2002 recording of Gene Clark's Echoes. Plus digital bonus tracks including a 2002 recording of key Adult Baby track Gayle, and previously unheard tracks from the Adult Baby recording sessions.

Vinyl is released 6 Sep 2024

Liner notes from back cover of the new LP:

If a Pop Supérette manifesto existed, its opening pages would surely read “the label that has nothing against 33rpm albums as long as they only contain hits”. Now, here’s a perfect illustration: Guy Blackman’s “Adult Baby”, a brilliant debut LP whose title refers to Brian Wilson’s “Adult Child” aborted project, albeit musically quite different in content. Rather than delivering nothing but hits, this album delivers nothing but songs perfectly suited to double A-side 45rpm singles (well, like those in the pink heydays of Island Records by Nick Drake, Duncan Browne, John Cale, or Kevin Ayers). Blackman’s output is in no way a seventies revival, tho’; he’s very much of his time, as evidenced by the wonderful showpiece “Gayle”, all white stiffness despite the funky brass arrangements.
Assembled like a diary, like many records of today, the album “Adult Baby”, unlike them, was worked on and reworked over a long period, involving so many musicians that it would be impossible to make it a grant-funded project, even in France! Guy Blackman doesn’t mind as his approach is clearly obsessive, where every arrangement seems to have been considered at length, no doubt rejecting the argument that weaker passages are part of the artistic work (one of the DIY tragedies).
By the way, who is Guy Blackman? Record shops may know him as one of the two driving forces behind Chapter Music (The Goon Sax etc.), one of Australia’s longest-running indie labels, which he founded in 1992 at the age of 17, and runs with Ben O’Connor, his partner in music and life. Guy Blackman is also known to be a nerdy fan of Syd Barrett, to whom he dedicated a fanzine in his teenage days, just before launching the label. With his very distinctive, haunting Brechtian voice (which might remind listeners of Nico), superior songwriting and delicate arrangements, “Adult Baby” is dear to all those who know it. How this little gem reached us in our hometown of Toulouse, France, seems a little nebulous today. Perhaps thanks to Stéphane of 2000 Records, or Julien Gasc, one of the artists on his label at the time. In all likelihood, it was thanks to Le Superhomard’s baritone Maxwell Farrington, an Aussie citizen exiled in Toulouse for a few years, that this album has made its way into the in-the-know circle, assuming a lost classic status, the “barely released, barely forgotten” kind, joining the ranks of must-have productions, sadly passed under the radar.
Maxwell Farrington: “Guy Blackman is one of Australia’s finest singer/songwriters. There are very, very few artists who can make me cry like he does. Normally I don’t give a damn about the lyrics, but with him it’s genius. After his moving (unpretentious) words come his graceful and sticky melodies and arrangements. ‘Adult Baby’ - this is a very important album for me, it’s the Mount Everest of Australian pop.”
Never released on vinyl, Pop Supérette, in association with Chapter Music, is reissuing this album originally published in CD format in 2008 by Unstable Ape Records. It includes, as a bonus track, a sublime rendition of Gene Clark’s “Echoes”, recorded around the same time.

credits

releases September 6, 2024

Produced by Casey Rice and Guy Blackman
Engineered by Casey Rice
Originally released by Unstable Ape Records, 2008
String arrangements by Paddy Mann
Recorded at Footscray Community Arts Centre, Woodstock,
Classics, Sing Sing South, and Headgap, 2005-2007
Mixed at Chocolate Factory by Casey Rice
Remastered for vinyl by Casey Rice, 2024

Front cover photograph by Karl Scullin
Original CD layout by Rick Milovanovic
LP design by Pop Supérette and Chapter Music
Inner sleeve painting by Loulou Picasso
Label artwork by Kynan Lawlor

Musicians:
Guy Blackman - vocals, piano, guitar, bass, keyboards
Casey Rice - guitar, backing vocals
Jens Lekman - duet vocals on Dark & Quiet Place
Peggy Frew - vocals on Johnny
Mick Turner - guitar on Dark & Quiet Place
Mikey Young - guitar on Gayle, Stay On the Beat
Clare Moore - vibraphone
Geoffrey O'Connor - guitar, backing vocals
Indra Adams - bass on Gayle, trumpet
Dale Packard - saxophone, clarinet
Nisa Venerosa - backing vocals
Julian Patterson - drums
Neil Erenstrom - drums
Brett Hudson - bass
Evelyn Ida Morris - accordion
Isobel Knowles - trumpet
Jessica Venables - cello
Nick Venables - viola
Julie Hewison - violin
Ross Cockle - violin
Robin Venables - violin

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about

Guy Blackman Melbourne, Australia

Sexy songwriter, Chapter Music lioness.

linktr.ee/guyblackman

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