Baby Shakes “Turn It Up”

Baby Shakes are a rock n roll-punk band from New York City (damn that place creates to great bands). The description of their sound is one that sounds right up our street. They promise to give us “catchy melodic vocals over dirty guitars and a killer rhythm section. References to The Ramones, Slade, Chuck Berry and 60’s Motown groups really sparks our interest.
Right from the off it’s pretty clear that with this album Baby Shakes are offering thirty minutes of fun. Songs like “Turn It Up” and “Crazy” are just great girl group songs given a rock n roll feel. They’ll make you want to smile and dance which isn’t a bad response to get from your music.

They also deliver some great power pop on “Come On”. Perhaps oddly, they have us thinking about The Monkees (a band we love). It’s the sound of a ‘proper’ pop song played by a real band. That’s not to say that they’re not willing to add a bit of crunch to their sound, as shown by “Another Place”. There is also a rockabilly flavour to tracks like “Baby Blue”, “Johnny, Let Go” and “Do What You Want”.

The main thing is that songs like “Last Night” and “Won’t See Me” are just insanely catchy. They consist of great melodies, neat guitar lines and vocals that make you want to sing along with them.
Baby Shakes won’t be challenging Radiohead with this release (Christ, why would anyone want to be so depressed as to do that anyhow?!?). But they do live up to both the band name and the album title. These songs will make you want to shake and you will definitely be turning it up loud.