The way the guitar tones unwind in Astral Bakers “Beautiful Everything” is redolent of Sonic Youth circa EVOL and Sister in a more drifty and wispy dynamic, daring to break from straight ahead notation in favor of expressive flourishes. The sound might be described as psych-noise-jangle. The layered rhythmic arrangements and finely accented melodies move with a gentle urgency. There is something spidery about the guitar work and fragile about the delicate percussion and a sensitive inflection to the vocals that reflects well a song that seems to be about someone who has tried so hard to do everything by the book to fit in with some mainstream image of success and acceptability and falling short repeats to themselves sentiments as those in the chours, “It’s a beautiful life, it’s a beautiful everything.” It’s an image that recalls Annette Bening’s character in 1999’s American Beauty where she’s so tightly wound and no one is fooled and she insists everything and everyone conform to her image of her life until little by little it can’t and the image is shattered and maybe she’d have been better off not trying to live up to unrealistic standards and images. This is a song about that. Living with immediacy and in acceptance of human frailty. In some regards the sentiments resonate with the sorts of things Jarvis Cocker was singing about on the 1995 Pulp album Different Class and how life would be so much easier if people could be real and not limited by internalized, arbitrary social conventions. It’s a subtle and poetic exploration of a complex emotional reality that many of us have experienced ourselves or witnessed in others. Watch road trip-themed performance video for “Beautiful Everything” on YouTube and follow French rock band Astral Bakers at the links below. The track comes from the group’s debut album The Whole Story set for release on February 9, 2024 via Sage Music.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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