Baby’s First Pistol – Affirmation Celebration CD

The Canadian underground music scene thrives, with so many artists and bands releasing some of the finest work we’ve heard and seen in decades. And just when you think you’ve heard it all, more outlets are delivering outstanding music that defies conventional styles. Baby’s First Pistol is certainly one of those bands you should definitely keep your attention on. With “Affirmation Celebration,” their latest piece of sonic artistry, this Toronto-based quintet merges everything you dearly love about underground music. Standing as their debut full-length, this material contains eleven excellent compositions, and many of these songs were released as standalone singles over the years, but the material operates as one cohesive whole. Sonically, Baby’s First Pistol combines many different yet complementary genres to illustrate such a fresh, unique, innovative, exciting sound. At first, you’ll notice how all those fundamental elements of post-punk roam through every segment of each composition, yet if you take a deep dive, you’ll hear how all those finest properties of punk rock, noise rock, post-hardcore, alternative, garage, and many other similar styles found their way into this sonic equation. Some listeners might think it’s way too many genres stacked onto one album, but do not worry, because Baby’s First Pistol combined everything with such precision and finesse. It’s certainly one of those recordings where every song assures you to keep listening and even forces you to repeat the listening experience all over again.

As soon as you press play, you’ll notice how this band cleverly, thoughtfully, expertly assembled the entire album. Each song on “Affirmation Celebration” arrives with a perfect structure, decorated with many clever arrangements, profoundly detailed segments, brilliant ideas, and outstanding musicianship. Each vocal, sonic, and rhythmic maneuver has its place and purpose here, making this material an even more pleasant listening experience. The best part about Baby’s First Pistol is how they stack raw, unfiltered, abrasive, generously distorted riffs with all those reverby, catchy, memorable, engaging themes, melodies, harmonies, and other sonic maneuvers. This interplay between guitars creates an aggressive, noisy, gritty, dark atmosphere that immediately wraps around your listening apparatus and refuses to let go long after the last notes and beats end. It’s nearly mindblowing how every layer articulate here without overwhelming the remainder of the orchestrations, proving that the band thought about everything while writing, composing, arranging, and producing this material. Besides creating such a luxuriant, lush soundscape, these guitar maneuvers also offer a perfect backdrop for all the vocals to shine upon. Speaking of the vocals, they are certainly a centerpiece of this recording, bringing all the emotion, complexity, detail, aggression, and melody to these compositions. You’ll notice how the vocal performance levitates between melodies and shouts, perfectly balancing low, mid, and high notes throughout the entire album. Beneath all those guitar works, you’ll notice an equally impressive bassline lurking around and offering more groove, detail, warmth, heaviness, and power. Sometimes clean, sometimes tastefully distorted, these lush low ends spice things up while serving as a binding element between the mentioned orchestrations and rhyhtmic patterns. In the meantime, the exceptional drumming performance, based upon expertly assembled, flawlessly performed, well-accentuated beats, breaks, fills, and other percussive acrobatics, keeps the entire band in line while dictating groove and pace. Everything sounds so perfect, making this material so pleasant to the ears.

It’s very difficult picking standout songs here, as the entire material shines with so many brilliant moments. You should definitely listen to this noisy post-punk gem from start to finish without skipping, because Baby’s First Pistol unquestionably deserves your utmost attention. The band has created a modern post-punk masterpiece that doesn’t follow the rules. Instead, Baby’s First Pistol took fundamental elements of it and molded them to their liking, creating a post-punk masterpiece that will stay with you long after the last notes and beats end. If you like honest, passionate, emotive, raw, unfiltered, aggressive, noisy post-punk sound crafted and performed by exceptional musicians, “Affirmation Celebration” will be right up your alley.