Barfly

If Stephen Jones hadnt been busy on a million other music soundtracks and solo projects for the past six years, you could call Between My Ears Theres Nothing But Music a comeback. Certainly it is the first Babybird album since Bugged, and the bands glorious appearances at Reading and Leeds in the summer of 2000. However, in the 12 new tracks on Between My Ears, fans will hear how Babybird instantly bridge the gap between 2006 and the breadth and depth of Joness previous work: from the disarming intimacy of his much-collected early demo albums, to the nine top-40 band hits, with the likes of the F-word, Bad Old Man and Youre Gorgeous and on into the evocative music he has been writing for films in the last couple of years. Teaming up again with guitarist and long-time collaborator Luke Scott, and drummer Rob Gregory , Stephen Jones wrote and recorded this Babybird album in London, an old duffer's rented cottage in Norfolk and, for a time, in a furniture-free shambling old villa somewhere near Pisa. The result, after two years of working on carving and trimming the amount of songs into album-size; cut down from three 80 minute CDRs worth of material, is Babybirds most eloquent and evenly expressive album to date. Opening with the fragile ballad Too Much and building through the swell of beats, guitars and fuzzy pop in songs like Dive and 70, the album closes with the stunning, yet understated dreamlike epic Beautiful Place. In Stephen Joness distinctive voice that can switch from in a moment from conversatilonal whisper to fullblown blast Between My Ears... is unmistakably Babybird. Yet in the deft mood changes of this album, there is an effortless shift to something deeper and more accomplished than when Babybird enjoyed their first Top 40 hits.