July 9, 2017 - Baby Dayliner returns!
Ten years after "quitting" the music business, the literate, electronic pop artist Baby Dayliner i...
May 14, 2009 - Baby Dayliner Returns With MP3, Heavy Airplay on KEXP
The Tenth Sexiest Everyday Man of 2008 has returned for some 2009 sexiness. This week, Baby Dayline...
November 21, 2008 - Baby Dayliner Named One of Ten Sexiest Everyday Men of 2008
Baby Dayliner was recently named The Tenth Sexiest Everyday Man of 2008 by Jezebel, a pop culture ex...
July 9, 2017 - Baby Dayliner returns!
Ten years after "quitting" the music business, the literate, electronic pop artist Baby Dayliner i...
May 14, 2009 - Baby Dayliner Returns With MP3, Heavy Airplay on KEXP
The Tenth Sexiest Everyday Man of 2008 has returned for some 2009 sexiness. This week, Baby Dayline...
November 21, 2008 - Baby Dayliner Named One of Ten Sexiest Everyday Men of 2008
Baby Dayliner was recently named The Tenth Sexiest Everyday Man of 2008 by Jezebel, a pop culture ex...
Romantic electronic pop artist Baby Dayliner (aka Ethan Marunas aka Babbs) was born and raised in New York City, and went to LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, and the Performing Arts, also known as the "FAME" high school. His undergraduate study was done at St. John's College in Annapolis, MD. After varying roles in various bands, Marunas decided to take the stage as a solo act. He became deft at synths, samplers, and recording, and began crafting songs that would come to life as the Baby Dayliner stage show.
His first big sonic influence was classical music that his parents and private teachers fed him as a child violinist (age 7-17). Strangely enough, his first pop music love was Hall and Oates, which he listened to alongside Kabuki theater music and other diverse sounds. Later came jazz and hip-hop records. As he explained to So Much Silence in an early interview, "I grew up listening to hip-hop, and I'm always aware of it. Even top 40 crap. Hip-hop is a big part of my dictionary but I'm not a real thorough fan of it. Certain albums stick out. Nas' first album. Common's Resurrection. The first couple De La albums. The first couple Tribe albums. Jay-Z's whole library, for the most part. I listen to Aesop Rock and Blockhead, who are friends from way back. The new Ghostface album is solid. Gnarls Barkley sounds cool. Dr. Octagon. Big Daddy Kane. Jungle Bros."
Baby Dayliner was discovered by Brassland in 2001, the dawn of NYC's indie rock hype-cycle as documented in the 2017 oral history Meet Me in the Bathroom by Lizzy Goodman. While Brooklyn was teeming with a cool factor that preceded the blog rock trend, Babbs emerged as a pioneer of the 00s NYC scene. While Brassland flagship band, The National, were still struggling to catch a break, Baby Dayliner was packing downtown clubs — inspiring the band, as well as the label.
In the early to mid-00s, rabid fans would fill his shows singing along to every hyper-literate lyric, while mimicking his stage moves. Embodying the effortless cool of Frank Sinatra and the romanticism of Morrissey, The National's Matt Berninger says that it was, in part, Baby Dayliner's fearlessness on stage that gave him license to become a front person in the first place. Baby Dayliner went on to open for The National during their 2006 North American tour, their first burst of their popularity. After signing to Brassland — the label co-owned by Bryce and Aaron Dessner — Babbs also did his own headline dates in London and Paris. After his sophomore album, Critics Pass Away, which was praised by Uncut, Time Out New York, and many others, Baby Dayliner seemed to disappear.
The truth is: he never really left. In 2008, Gawker blog Jezebel named him one of the world's Sexiest Everyday Men, alongside President Barack Obama and his bodyguard, and journalists Nate Silver and Ezra Klein. In subsequent years an early leaked demo of "You Push, I'll Go" was named Song of the Day on KEXP, where it became an all-time favorite of morning host, John Richards. For the lion's share of the past decade, though, Babbs left the performing scene behind for a steady rhythm of work as a DJ throughout NYC's clubs, bars, and backrooms, where he puts his unique spin on the Top 40 hits. He did, however, tour in 2014 — performing a dozen American tour dates with The Uncluded (a collaboration between Aesop Rock and Kimye Dawson) occasionally joined by The Pizza Underground (Macaulay Culkin's Velvet Underground parody band).
In 2015, KEXP's John Richards — following years of airplay for "You Push, I'll Go" — enthusiastically invited Baby Dayliner to join the line-up of a benefit concert for the Seattle station. "I've been waiting to for years to see that live," Richards said after the performance of "You Push, I'll Go." In 2016, the subscription vinyl club Turntable Kitchen put the track on 7" wax for its first ever physical release — reinforcing its status as an underground cult classic.
Now Baby Dayliner returns! "You Push I'll Go" is finally widely available as part of a new EP — his first commercial release in over a decade. Recorded in upstate New York during a brief time away from his longtime home in Manhattan, the new collection is the first product of that period of sequestration. It reveals a series of songs — some new, some reworked from sets between his last release and today. While the music borrows elements from synth-pop, dance music, and hip-hop, it never confuses them. The sound has the sweetness and catchiness of indie pop, and elements of R&B 'real talk' and yet it sits uncomfortably between those genres, making it a fusion of worlds that other artists can't help but notice.
It's been accompanied by glowing praise from composer Nico Muhly, hip-hop MC Aesop Rock, and The National's singer Matt Berninger,— proving Baby Dayliner is an artist's artist, whose impact cuts across genre. Says Berninger: "What I like most Baby Dayliner’s writing is that there's rarely any meanness in his songs; no forced posturing or aggressiveness; and they are loaded with empathy. He sings about flawed and vane characters but with genuine understanding and kindness. The music is catchy, smart, and weird— something beautiful and odd, that only he does. Baby Dayliner is something uncommon in pop music. He’s unique."
Which finally, is what we aim for...