Memories are fleeting. It can be hard to pin down a moment worth remembering, and it can be even harder to push sadder memories aside. Prince Edward Island folk duo Baby God spend their latest release, Another Suffer, adrift in time and sifting through some memories of their own.
Though the album feels steeped in nostalgia for June sunshine and warm summer nights, the memories evoked by the lyrics are much more complex than that. They revel in the happy memories, while also lamenting the time lost between the then and now. At the same time, Baby God know how to pluck the sad memories from the very same sunshine they spend time serenading.
This ends up coming across differently depending on the song, but nothing ever feels rooted in the present. “Over The Headlights” is a breezy tune recalling summer jobs at the mall, while “Middle Of June” is more of a mournful look back to the last good moment of a thing.
With that in mind, it’s clear that the duo is going for a timeless feeling. The album feels too carefully crafted for that vintage feeling to be a coincidence, but Baby God also just dons that persona with enough ease and grace to avoid the sort of forced pretentiousness where others might land. All of the pieces line up carefully with each other, from the muted production to the vintage vocal vignettes that close off many of the songs.
The lyrics also linger a lot in the beauty of nature and surroundings. “Water” has the duo painting pictures of their island’s beauty, a peaceful, plucking guitar backing up images of red sand, ice-cold water, and the love of somebody special. It’s one of the most vivid tracks, but every song on the album conjures vibrant imagery. It’s their way of painstakingly preserving each moment, down to the very last ray of light.
The album is bookended by two of the only songs that really dig into the present moment, but they’re drastically different in tone. “Insane Now”, one of the album’s leading singles, is a sunny, upbeat road trip of a song filled with a desire to escape from worries and live in happier moments. “Trying To Fill The Day”, meanwhile, closes out the album in a moment of internal crisis. There’s just something heart-clenching about the vocals on this last track.
“I’m afraid I’m a fake,” the two sing on the latter in painfully crisp harmony. “What the winter takes, no summer can reclaim.”
It feels like a hopeless sentiment to end on, but if they’ve spent this album teaching us anything, it’s that these things can be complicated. What feels hopeless in the moment can eventually become just another tough memory, and sometimes we can look back on better days and cry. Time muddles both instances greatly, but Another Suffer effortlessly shows what it is to lay it all bare and make what sense of it we can.