Concert Review: My Baby - Napier - 6th March 2025

Presented By Eccles Entertainment

MY BABY LIVE AT PAISLEY STAGE - PHOTO CREDIT ANDREW CALDWELL

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL MY BABY GALLERY BY ANDREW CALDWELL

Review By: Rob Harbers

Artist/Band: My Baby SUP by Ash Sales

Venue/City: Paisley Stage, Napier, New Zealand

Date of Event: Thursday 6th March 2025

My Baby have popped their Paisley Stage cherry, making their first visit to Ahuriri’s coolest little venue. And whiare le they did their thing; the joint was jumping indeed! An outfit that crosses cultural lines, being made up of two Dutch siblings; Cato and Joost Van Dick, (bass/LVs and drums/BVs respectively) and a Kiwi, Daniel Johnston, guitar and BVs, the band combine a wide range of influences and styles into a sound that just keeps going!

The length of the queue for the event meant that I unfortunately missed most of support act Ash Sales’ set. What I did see though, confirmed (as if it needed it!) his status as a loop-meister extraordinaire. Complex soundscapes that could serve as demonstration samples for what can be achieved, walls of sound built by a master craftsman of the genre.

From the first minute of their arrival on stage My Baby got the capacity audience on their feet, with their complex mix of influences coming together in a performance that embodied the very spirit of the refrain “I want to take you higher”. Four nights earlier, I witnessed Andy McCluskey of OMD, telling his audience that “We’re fucking relentless!” and this amped up that same feeling to a heat that ran contrary to the onset of cooler autumnal temperatures outside!

Among the elements thrown in to the melting pot that created this band are Indian ragas, Moroccan Gnawa, 70s funk, EDM, African desert blues, and many more besides, with a heavy overlay of bluesy guitar that could be straight from the Mississippi Delta. But however you want to categorise it or whatever can be detected within, the overall package is one of pure joy in its own existence and radiates that joy out into the ears of all those fortunate enough to be hearing it.

The opening song setting a funky groove in place, was ‘In the Club, You Haunt Me’ with the follow-up ‘Out On Gin’ going back to their first album, 10 years old this year, ‘Shamanaid’. ‘Mary Morgan’, played next, and described by Cato as not being played very often, was written in a tiny Welsh village and told the tale of a legendary character of that area, before ‘Good Gin Blues’ gave Cato an opportunity to showcase her vocal talents. Damn, has that lady got some pipes on her!

The middle part of the set was made of some new songs, from the forthcoming album due out in May, and avoided the fate often suffered by new material being debuted in the live setting in perfectly seamlessly with the rest of the songs. Following this, amazingly enough given the intensity of what’d already been delivered, the instructions for the lighting tech described the final songs as the ‘regular high energy part of the set’; so if this is high energy, what the fuck was that before? How energetic can you get?
And that question was answered by a ramping up of the pace to what could have been unsustainable to lesser mortals, but not to these guys, particularly the human drum machine that is Joost! Racing through the last few songs in a way that truly did take us higher, and leaving no doubt, some trepidation on the part of those that had to work the next day.

But isn’t that the way it should be? where energy goes into the bits of real life that sustain us through the boring stuff? In any case too soon it was over, the previous couple of hours having disappeared in a haze of good times!
So, in short, get along to one of the tour’s remaining dates, if you want a couple of hours to dance your ass off (if that’s your thing) and to forget for a couple hours at least, the gathering storms outside!

Set list:
In the Club/You Haunt Me
Out on Gin
Mary Morgan
Good Gin Blues
Ain’t No Turning Back
High Hopes
Smiley Virus
R U For Real?
Seeing Red
Agree
Uprising
Make a Hundred/Higher
Mad Mountain Thyme
Money Man

My Baby NZ Tour PR 2025

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