Think Like A Key 2025
Extolling the talents behind untimely paradigm-shifter of five-decade vintage, American multi-instrumentalist and his guests discover new meanings of perennial songs.
Babies Of War Babies
With an album he’s always been fascinated with produced by an auteur he’s fan of, Fernando Perdomo’s hyperactive mind was bound to go into overdrive, on a timewarp, and try to recreate the sound of his favorite platter without replicating its arrangements. An almost impossible task, given the fact that the very gist of tribute projects – such as the first Fern-overseen various-artist paean to Todd Rundgren, "Someone/Anyone?" – lies in a difference of delivery between original and homage, the task whose intellectual nature seemed to contradict the very soulfulness of Daryl Hall and John Oates’ music. But then, the duo’s 1974 offering “War Babies” found them moving from warm emotionality to much colder art rock, which provided a perfect wormhole for Perdomo to access the classic and turn the sympathetic address to baby boomers into an equally adventurous ode to millennials. And the results of his endeavor prove no less engaging.
There are fresh sensibilities applied to these evergreens, not least thanks to the two of them entrusted to female vocalists – the infectiously feisty “Beanie G. And The Rose Tattoo” to Linn Holmes and the elegantly roaring “Screaming Through December” to Rachel Flowers, the latter also adding a vertiginous Rhodes solo to her prog-rock track – while “I’m Watching You (A Mutant Romance)” finds Fernando himself take the lead to enhance the piece’s punchy intimacy. Mainly, though, it’s Perdomo’s bold upgrades of Rundgren’s sonic template on the likes of “Can’t Stop The Music (He Played It Much Too Long)” – where Mike Gent and John Powhida’s voices blend to a great effect – which make the slightly patinated cuts burst into color and spring to life again. The tribute’s curator isn’t being humble by delegating stellar guitar duties on “Is It A Star” to singer Rob Bonfiglio and on “70’s Scenario” to Andy Timmons, because all the details of the new aural pictures serve the tunes rather than highlight individual performers’ talents. That’s why Fern’s handling all the parts and Ken Sharp painting the top line simply, if brilliantly, bring “You’re Much Too Soon” to here and now, and that’s “War Baby (Son Of Zorro)” shines in the light of Aqxyl Storms’ warm tones and Perdomo’s six-string passages. Still, “Better Watch Your Back” gets significantly fleshed out with Eamon Ryland’s slider rolling across the frets and Jesse David Corti’s pipes lending gravitas to lyrics, and “Johnny Gore And The ‘C’ Eaters” fully embrace glam values under Nick Bertling’s heaps of harmonic bliss, the blistering reimaginings doing more than justice to Hall and Oates’ melodies.
It may be a sacrilegious statement, but, emphasizing the remarkable status of the original album, “Babies Of War Babies” fares better than “War Babies” and has better chances to stand the test of time.
****3/4
