News

July 9, 2017

Baby Dayliner returns!

Ten years after "quitting" the music business, the literate, electronic pop artist Baby Dayliner is back. (Aka Ethan Marunas...or Babbs if you're being casual about it.) If you've been paying attention to the internet these past few weeks you've probably noticed. Most prominently king-making NYC scene blog BrooklynVegan debuted his new EP in full this past Friday. Before reading any more of the hype, though, may we encourage you to just listen to the music for yourself...

(Hopefully you'll get so caught up in the tunes you won't even bother reading the rest of this.)

...but if you insist, we'll be happy to oblige with *MORE*. The centerpiece of the release is the title track of Baby Dayliner's new EP "You Push I'll Go" — a monster underground single if ever there was one. It's already something of a cult 'hit' after years of airplay and advocacy by KEXP, specifically morning DJ John Richards, who discovered & pushed (no pun intended) the song as a demo several years back. Old news then? Nah, hardly: for example, here is the brand-new video, which KEXP kindly premiered a few days before the new EP was released calling it "infectious" and an "earworm of a track" — as well as adding the song back into rotation on their broadcast & webcast stations:

Thankfully John isn't the only one coming out to support Babbs' this time around. Consequence of Sound premiered the first single & video for "The Triumph of Sarah's Past" calling it a "quirky yet infectious pop cut about a woman who seems to leave a path of destruction wherever she goes" and a song which "manages to capture the finer details of human nature and complex feeling." See it for yourself:

CoS also unveiled an unexpected advocate for Baby Dayliner: Matt Berninger, singer & lyricist for our flagship band The National; founder of recent side project El Vyl; and co-creator of the Mistaken for Strangers documentary. As it turns out, Matt was more enthusiastic than anyone about Babbs' return — and offered to go on record about it. You can read Matt's short essay about Babbs in full on CoS or elsewhere on this here label website. But here's a taste:

"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."
And if reading isn't your bag, Matt was also kind enough to pay a visit to our friends at the Surface Noise Podcast, where he gave an interview entirely about Baby Dayliner. As it turns out, Babbs' New York shows at the turn of the century were a formative inspiration to Mr. Berninger & The National boys. What blew our minds, though, is the 20-minute conversation that ensued — longer than the interview Surface Noise conducted with Baby Dayliner himself as part of the same podcast, a fine example of scholarly commentary outpacing the source material. Listen to the embed below or click this link to check it at your favorite podcatcher (iTunes, Soundcloud, et. al.).

Happily, others bloggers and content creators have come out of the woodwork with their memories of Babbs as well. Among our favorites are Surviving the Golden Age (which also interviewed Baby D), Diamond Deposits, AudioFuzz and RXTT.

And since the year y2k17 wouldn't be complete without a reference to streaming music, let us point you toward the Baby Dayliner playlist love. Legendary UK musician Ben Watt added the title track to his 'endless mixtape' Spin Cycle. This made us all blush a bit because we all love Watt's old band Everything But The Girl — and his more low-profile solo albums and their folk-inflected quiet storm vibe. The National have also gotten into the act, adding the same song to the playlist tied to their second new single Guilty Party.

Finally, to wrap this post up, we'll point you toward Babbs' Mixtape. It's a semi-regularly updated playlist of his favorite DJ bangers interspersed with some of his favorite recordings he's released under the Baby Dayliner name. We've embedded the Spotify player but you can check it on Apple Music as well using this link.

Happy listening to you and we can assure you, the next Baby Dayliner release is not years away...


More about Baby Dayliner | More news stories for Baby Dayliner