Lately, Love Is Dead

Ray Sonder and Saxon Gable grew up in sleepy beach towns on Australia’s east coast. Their parents were hippies and rockers. They were spoon fed Nirvana and The Beatles on the car radio whether they liked it or not.

Both self taught musicians, they began writing songs from an early age, evoking the quiet beaches and wild Gondwana Rainforest that were their back yards. By University, they were writing hazy, sunkissed demos to upload online and share with friends. Inspired by technicolor, small-town beatniks and surfers, and the romantic soundtracks of their early youth, the foundations of Baby Smith were laid a long time ago. But neither Saxon nor Ray knew each other yet, despite likely crossing paths.

The pair each travelled to Berlin from Sydney separately and within two weeks of each other to explore new subcultures, and write songs. They met, and soon married, spiritually united by their affection for the whimsical, intimate, deeply melodic sounds of 1960s psychedelia and 1990s Grunge. What followed their creative union was musical exploration and experiments that led to the genesis of Baby Smith in 2023.

Since then, Ray and Saxon have had their foot firmly on the gas, writing, producing, and releasing EP I and EP II. However, there is stark contrast between their early music and their upcoming debut album 'Lately, Love Is Dead'. Written entirely using a deliberately stripped-back home setup including dented microphones, a broken mic stand, and a glitching 12-year-old interface, the record trades the sun-kissed haze of their early releases for something darker, sharper and more immediate. The songwriting carries new weight; the production feels urgent and alive. It sounds like the duo have jumped into a whole new sonic universe, and it's catchy as hell!

Thematically, the album wrestles with the human experience at close range: love and loss, self-doubt and self-loathing, fractured relationships, substance abuse within inner circles, and a simmering disillusionment with modern life and the digital status quo. What began without a fixed concept gradually revealed itself as a portrait of a specific, volatile period in their lives. A collection of hypnotic odes to the fall of romance in an ever polarising world,'Lately, Love Is Dead', peels back the layers of the artists, exposing an emotional core and experimental capability not yet heard from the duo.