Stream: Steady Holiday, ‘Nobody’s Watching’

Kevin Bronson on June 22nd, 2018

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Steady Holiday (Photo by Isaac Ravishankara)

Singer-songwriter Dre Babinski is not the kind you’d think would be motivated by greed, fear and self-interest. But in her delicate voice, she inhabits somebody who is — in an almost scary fashion — on “Nobody’s Watching,” the title track to her sophomore album as Steady Holiday.

The follow-up to Steady Holiday’s 2016 debut “Under the Influence” (which propelled her to a Coachella appearance) and the 2017 EP “Terror,” the new album will be out Aug. 24 via Barsuk Records. While the first album couched her personal ruminations in airy dream-pop, Babinski’s music since has cast a wary eye at the outside world. “I’ve been just as affected by our current politics as anyone, but it only takes one step back to realize these same figures have been present since the beginning of civilization,” she says. “This record is sort of an anthropological way of unpacking all this discomfort for me.”

Produced by Gus Seyffert, “Nobody’s Watching” has the warm, occasionally playful feel of a chanteuse holding forth on matters of the heart. That’s not the character she’s playing here, though, or the warning she’s sounding. Listen closely.

||| Stream: “Nobody’s Watching”