Babe Report - Did You Get Better (2024) [Hi-Res]

With a squall of guitar and a crash of drums, two years on from the release of their exhilarating debut EP, Chicago noisemakers Babe Report finally release their debut album in 2024, in the form of the rough-and-ready Did You Get Better, released this Spring via Exploding In Sound. Formed of ten new songs, and all wrapped in under half an hour, it’s an immediate and breathless arrival.

Where the band initially existed as a lockdown-inspired duo, Babe Report became a fully-fledged four-piece on the aforementioned The Future of Teeth EP, with Ben Grigg and Emily Bernstein expanding their line-up to include Peter Reale on drums and Mech on bass. Such reinforcements grow exponentially here, and they come to define Did You Get Better. Both a bigger and more accomplished version of the band than we’ve heard to-date, the album boasts a woozy concoction of 90s-drenched guitars and melodic grooves.

Recorded over just one weekend in November 2023 at Radon Ranch - Ben and Emily’s humble basement studio - the songs here are both gripping in their immediacy and wholly intoxicating. Embracing disorder throughout, Babe Report funnel their influences into something both boisterous and exuberant; a thunderstorm trapped inside a bottle.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Babe Report - Turtle of Reaper (2:06)
1.02 - Babe Report - Universal (1:43)
1.03 - Babe Report - Freak On A Lease (2:45)
1.04 - Babe Report - Secular Mantis (1:59)
1.05 - Babe Report - Voidreader (1:36)
1.06 - Babe Report - Allergy 2000 (3:27)
1.07 - Babe Report - Ocean (1:44)
1.08 - Babe Report - Jane (2:56)
1.09 - Babe Report - Kathleen (3:49)
1.10 - Babe Report - Bite My Lip (4:20)