Babybird’s The Pleasures of Self Destruction is reviewed by a fan for The Bad Pages. Here’s the verdict: “This album has no filler, no duffers, just 13 beautifully crafted songs”.

John Lovie – Babybird super fan and collector since 1995 – was one of the first fans to get his hands on an advance promo of babybird’s upcoming album The Pleasures of Self Destruction.

And after some moderate pressure and flattery ( “I hate any pretentious interviews where the writer seems to take some moral highground”), The Bad Pages, who has yet to enjoy the sounds, finally persuaded him to write his first music review ever – and the very first review of ‘Pleasures’ at all.

Thanks John for sharing your thoughts with the rest of us.

Pre-order Pleasures at Amazon now. Release date is 31. October.

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‘The Pleasures of Self Destruction’

by John Lovie

I don’t like reviews. They have led me away from albums I eventually loved and led me to buy albums that I thought were awful.

This is my first review of an album and the last as I am not a wordsmith and would not pretend otherwise. Babybird albums give me goosebumps, especially on first listen.

‘The Pleasures of Self Destruction’ keeps on giving me those bumps every time I listen because it is just so good, heart achingly good. So many quotable lyrics “..think I was hanging naked from a church spire wire, tied by my ankles to a weather vane, felt like Jesus on fire”!

So many beautiful melodies and hooks. Epic, is what I think when listening to opener The Jesus Stag Night Club or Can’t Love You Any More. Feelings of vulnerability and melancholy fill me during ‘A Little More Each Day’.

‘Pleasures’ is a rollercoaster of highs from the psychedelic joy of Beautiful Haze to the most perfect closing track on an album I can think of, Remember Us.

Stephen sounds like he is in a good place right now. The love and good vibes that flow from ‘Pleasures’ are completely uplifting, but as usual everything is not always as it seems inside a Babybird album with a sinister twist always lurking nearby “I love my kids so much, but they don’t like me…” in Song for the Functioning Alcoholic. A dad puts his drink and drugs down before visiting his little girl in her school playground in I Love Her. The internet stalker in www.song is brilliantly disturbing.

I think back to my teenage years spent in drunken stupors during Don’t Wake Me Up, full of love and emotion for that girl just out of reach. Listening to Babybird can feel like a compensation for my own lack of imagination as my mind gets filled with all kinds of images and scenarios. The beautiful guitar playing on The Best Days of Our Lives and the melancholy of the song is another example of Stephen Jones taking me to a place no other singer/songwriter can take me.

This is the best album I have heard this year, I didn’t think I would hear a better album than ‘Let England Shake’ and I might be biased having been a fan since 1995 (thanks NME!), but this really takes Babybird to new heights.

This album has no filler, no duffers, just 13 beautifully crafted songs. Having been on repeat for the last three days the hooks are seared into my skull. especially the adrenalin filled kicking your arse riff from I’m Not A Killer.

I’m happy up on Babybird’s cloud and I want to stay there for a long, long time.

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And again: Pre-order Pleasures at Amazon now.

This is related to what you just read

Sep 17, 2011: Twitter: Stephen is finally plugged in
Aug 28, 2011: Pleasures of Self Destruction tracklist revealed
Aug 15, 2011: Self Destruction at the end of October
Aug 6, 2011: Live shows later this year
July 31, 2011: No new beginning for Stephen Jones
Feb 14, 2011: It’s so loud I can’t hear it, but it’s not a Babybird album