Baby Animals, The - Il Grande Silenzio (Album)
In 1993, Baby Animals were at the height of their popularity, Paul Keating was Prime Minister, and Jurassic Park had just hit the cinemas.
Well some things have changed but others are basically the same. Cloverfield is the latest monster movie and Labor is back in the hot seat but the Baby Animals have (until now that it) faded into early-nineties hard rock semi-obscurity.
Led by DeMarchi (who started singing in Perth pubs at 17), the Baby Animals shot to fame on the strength of their scorching self-titled debut. They followed this up with Shaved and Dangerous which was less well received. Add ‘difficult second album syndrome’ to record company hassles and throat problems for your singer and you had a recipe for a quagmire that put a severe dampener on the bands progress.
Now, 13 years after their last album, and eight years after DeMarchi’s solo album comes Il Grande Silenzio, an acoustic reworking of many of the band’s finer moments, with some new ones thrown in too.
If all Il Grande Silenzio did was to remind us of the Baby Animals’ scorching debut and follow-up albums then it would have served its purpose. It does much more however; it casts a light on a set of songs that reveal their quality in exciting new ways. "This is great way to reaffirm what we've done and what we have," says Suze.
"It means The Great Silence," Suze DeMarchi clarifies, for those who don't speak spaghetti western "It seemed appropriate. It's a soft, quiet, dreamy kind of record. And it's been a long time." Opening with 'One Word', the album gets off to a lukewarm start. However, things immediately get more interesting once song two, 'Early Warning' gets underway, and the quality stays consistent from there on in.
The debut album and Shaved and Dangerous will also be re-mastered and re-issued in 2008, along with an Australian tour. A new rock album is also on the way “I’ve always been a rock’n’roll girl at heart,” says DeMarchi.
Il Grande Silenzio is out through the Liberation Blue Acoustic Serious label.
