The Beautiful New Born Children is a great name, even though I'm pretty sure that newborn is one word. Grammar policing aside, I don't know a hell of a lot about this band, nor does anybody else seem to for that matter. Not even their record company. They've only spoken to them a few times since the band (from who knows where?) sent in an unsolicited demo CD-r with (naturally) no contact information to the offices of Domino Recordings. Liking what they heard, the label went on a wild goose chase to track down those responsible for the slew of two-minute bursts of Stooges inspired garage-rock that lay within said non-descript demo.
It's a great rock-n-roll story, and who the hell knows, maybe it's even true. Cutting a swath through the record company mystery-hype machine jungle, I found myself face to face with Hey People!, the debut album from The Beautiful New Born Children (from here on known simply as TBNBC thank you very much). A mere twenty-three minutes long, (seven of Hey People's nine tracks clock in under the two-minute mark) it's an unintelligible, inarticulate and garbled mess of an album that's kind of fun to listen to if you can get past the fact that every song sounds exactly the same.
TBNBC is holding onto the garage-noise-pop shtick like its life depended on it, and they do deliver some super-catchy tunes, namely the one-two punch of album opener Do The Do and Paper Mill. Things slide steadily downhill from there, although I can't decide if it's just the repetitiveness of Hey People! or the limited range of the whole garage genre. Either way, it gets old in a hurry.
While Hey People! has its good points, the old adage "A little goes a long way" was never more apt than it is here. It's a decent album that, if not taken too seriously, could deliver a good twenty minutes of unbridled, unmysterious ass-shaking delight. Enjoy.
- Mark Horan | 2005-10-24
