Sunday, December 4, 2022

Baby Combat and the happy /sad spinning reflections of "All My Hurt Are Now Just Words"

American Robb 12:04:00 PM "All My Hurt Are Now Just Words", Baby Combat, garage rock, indie rock, multi-instrumentalist, Noel Yeo, portland, power pop, singer songwriter

"Every question comes out wrong / The best intentions come undone / Moving on feels like the worst / We only progress in reverse..."

The incredibly free spirited drums, the sprite jangle pop guitars, the sticky bass lines and Noel Yeo's signature vocal aesthetic laced with melancholia (but burnt around the edges with hope) are my favorite things about "All My Hurt Are Now Just Words" by Noel's musical alter ego, Baby Combat. Noel always has a way of injecting a sense of joy within the sadness and like a lot of his songs, this one too, is born from seeds of complex feelings.

Noel shares:

"The song is an investigation into my own excessive drinking and why that happens"

Decipher the lyrics and some of those complex seeds sprout:

"An excursion into the void (Pick up a bottle, and drop the poise)
A dalliance without the joy (it's an old routine, an unfortunate choice)
Sinking deeper to whence you came (bathroom selfie, it's me again)
A perfect bedrock of shame"

Some more starkly pointed:

"Drop the ruse, and maybe lose the booze
It was never you, never you
Fantasy? Is happy fantasy?
All my hurt are now just words"

But most encapsulated into poetic truths:

"Episodes are getting long (we'll lose the darkness, we'll right the wrong)
Serialized into pop songs (and into ears we drop bombs)
Packaged slick for the teens (and everyone who still believe)
Forget the warts, never mind the dream"

As a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, I always like Noel's moments of what feels like catharsis and the way he somehow melds bits of happy /sad together. Dive in will you?

-Robb Donker Curtius