Sweet Baboo

Halfway through Sweet Baboo’s fifth album comes I Just Want To Be Good, in which the North Wales singer appears to describe himself in glowing terms. ‘I’m a lovely little man,’ sings Stephen Black who, as Sweet Baboo, has written and performed songs of sweet sentiment and charming melody since 2003 but never with such accomplishment as on The Boombox Ballads.

Black isn’t celebrating his own loveliness, however. I Just Want To Be Good is by fellow Welsh singer Cate Le Bon, a close friend for whom Black plays bass, and she wrote the song about him. It’s the only cover on an album of otherwise personal love songs that combine kitchen sink detail with universal appeal, and it shows a new side to Sweet Baboo: as the Harry Nilsson of Snowdonia, a gifted songwriter not above lending his dulcet tones to the words of others.

With The Boombox Ballads, Sweet Baboo wanted to explore more what it was to be a singer as opposed to a ‘singer-songwriter’, a term that to him at least seems to have picked up negative connotations.

All of this fed into a simple but ambitious goal: to make the perfect album. Originally, Black wanted to make The Boombox Ballads on his own, but then reality set in. Recorded in a Cardiff studio with producer Charlie Francis, and a whole host of musicians including: Avvon Chambers and Daniel Ward on drums; Rob Jones and Huw Evans on bass; a string quartet; arranger Paul Jones; guest singers Zervas & Pepper on Got To Hang Onto You; and Laura Byron of Tender Prey on You Got Me Time Keeping, the result is a vibrant, endearing pop classic.

The Boombox Ballads follows Black’s Motorhome Songs EP, his 2013’s acclaimed Ships and 2010’s I’m A Dancer / Songs About Sleeping – both nominated for the Welsh Music Prize.

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