The Baby Seals venture somewhere considerably darker on ‘Irene’, a slow-burning departure from the Cambridgeshire trio’s usual frenetic garage-punk. Originally given the rather less radio-friendly title ‘Ode To Irene’s Cunt’, the track takes inspiration from surrealist erotic novel Le Con d’Irène, while expanding into ideas around birth, nature and the unexplained connections that bind us together.
Born from a twenty-minute jam session, ‘Irene’ retains that instinctive quality throughout. A dark, repetitive riff creeps beneath the track, establishing a murky, doomy psych-rock atmosphere as Kerry’s hushed vocals add to its hypnotic pull. The drums remain restrained for much of the song, allowing repetition and space to do the heavy lifting rather than sheer volume. As ‘Irene’ progresses, cymbal crashes and increasingly ritualistic layers of vocals begin to gather around the central riff, gradually ramping up the tension without breaking its strange spell. As Kerry explains of the band’s increasingly intuitive chemistry, “We’re at a really fun place where we’ve played enough together now to lock in, so we can jam stuff out and it mostly (!) doesn’t sound too shit.”
The homemade video draws that mystical connection to nature even further into focus. Footage of trees, deer and landscapes at dusk is layered with red-lit images of the band swaying and wandering through the woods, giving the whole thing the air of some mysterious woodland ritual. Unnerving, mesmerising and wonderfully unexpected, ‘Irene’ shows just how compelling The Baby Seals can be when they allow themselves to wander off the beaten path.
